The Causes And Effects Of Deforestation In Indonesia

For every drop of palm oil that 's hidden in your everyday food products, for every sheet of paper used to write a quick note or every litre of palm oil used in biodiesel, innocent animals die, as much as a hectare of forest is destroyed and harmful greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere. These are just some of the by-products and effects of deforestation, the act of opening up land predominantly covered by primary forest, by burning or cutting down trees to make way for the land to be used for something else. The palm oil plantations in Indonesia that are created by deforestation are, quite simply, unsustainable and the effect of these on the decreasing population of orang-utans is devastating.

Indonesia contains the world’s third largest rainforest, which accommodates 12% of the world’s mammal species and is one of the highest biologically diverse places in the world. However, due to deforestation, this is all changing; now many of Indonesia’s once common native species have become endangered, its rainforests left desolate and dead and its breath-taking views are now just wasteland.

If deforestation in Indonesia continues at its current rate, a wide range of animals such as Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos will become extinct, wiped from earth, never to be seen again and we must do something to halt this before it is too late.

Annually, from 2006 to 2010, Indonesia alone lost 690,00 hectares and then a further 840,000 hectares