Take a look at www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com. It's a site that shows that palm oil cultivation does not necessarily lead to the destruction of rainforests. For one thing, cultivation is usually on designated agricultural land. Also, there is a roundtable on sustainable palm oil for the various stakeholders in the palm oil industry.

I even saw a video of how plantation workers are trained to treat and heal injured orang utans should they come across them!

It is true that some illegal logging is being done, but it is not only for palm oil. They also use the burning technique for clearing land for grain or do timber logging, again, all illegal. The important thing is that the palm oil industry should not be 'blacklisted' or accused of something they may not even be responsible for but for a few bad apples!

One of the major problems involving oil palms in Borneo recently involved plans for huge (world's largest) oil palm plantation in northern Kalimantan.
Would involve clearing major areas of forest.
I've spoken with Stuart Chapman, International Coordinator of WWF-originated Heart of Borneo project, and he told me the planned plantation area would involve substantial proportion of proposed Heart of Borneo.
Helped by research by CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research), plus people in oil palm industry, they worked on persuading Indonesian government that the area - in hills - was not suitable for oil palms. Happily, the Indonesian government halted the scheme - which WWF (and others) viewed as a sham, an attempt to fell a huge area for timber.
Are places already, I believe, where trees felled for oil palms, but no palms later planted; timber sold, and land left.
So, shenanigans associated with this industry.

WWF also showed Kalimantan has large areas that are already cleared, and suitable for oil palms: no need to fell more trees to make way for them.

I've been through oil palm plantations in Sabah: just horrible monoculture; replaced major biodiversity, and in lowlands where there were the richest rainforest.
Borneo now has only tiny fraction of its lowland forests remaining.

I've heard too that it's hard to remove oil palms - something re getting rid of roots being real hard.

See also: The Oil Palm Problem in Indonesia from Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.<br><br>Post edited by: Martin, at: 2007/01/25 07:15

Email from Ecological Internet:

Let the President know the world expects Indonesia to keep the
Environment Minister's promise to tackle the root causes of
rainforest fires and peatland drainage http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=indonesia_peatland

Indonesia's rainforests contain 60% of all the tropical peat in
the world. Such rainforests on peat soils are one of the world's
most important carbon sinks and play a vital role in helping to
regulate the global climate. They are also very rich in
biodiversity and a refuge for species like orang-utans.
Rainforest peatlands are being destroyed fast; primarily by palm
oil, timber, and paper and pulp companies.

The Indonesian
government has endorsed a massive biofuel program which foresees
an increase in oil palm plantations to eventually over 26
million hectares. Far from reducing climate change emissions, it
will rapidly release up to 50 billion tons of carbon into the
atmosphere. This is the equivalent of over 6 years of global
fossil fuel emissions and could well make the generally accepted
2 degree C of warming that is considered &quot;dangerous&quot; unavoidable.

A recent study has found that one ton of biodiesel made from
palm oil grown on Southeast Asia’s peatlands is linked to the
emission of 10-30 tons of carbon dioxide. Shockingly, this is 2-
8 times as much carbon released as in production of a ton of
fossil fuel diesel. Please write to the Indonesian government
now to express your grave concerns over biofuel expansion plans
which threaten to further destroy rainforests and peatlands, and
to thus dangerously accelerate global warming.

TAKE ACTION NOW at: http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=indonesia_peatland

Discuss this alert at: http://www.climateark.org/blog/2007/02/alert_indonesias_biofuel_expan.asp

Another email from Ecological Internet (Sept 07):

It is gravely unethical and ecologically devastating to expand
production of biofuels at the expense of ancient primary rainforests,
biodiverse grasslands, local communities and their food sovereignty
http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=colombia_biofuel


The Colombian government is embarking on a massive expansion of oil
palms, sugar cane and other monocultures for agrofuels and other
markets at the expense of rainforests, biodiverse grasslands and
local communities...

Palm oil expansion is linked to large-scale
rainforest destruction and to serious violence and human rights
abuses. NGOs have documented 113 killings in the river basin of
Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó, in Chocó region at the hands of
paramilitaries who are working with plantation companies to take over
land which legally belongs to Afro-Colombian communities... The Chocó
forests which are being destroyed by palm oil expansion are some of
the largest remaining coastal lowland rainforests on the Earth and
are amongst the most biodiverse forests on Earth. They are home to
7,000 to 8,000 species, including 2,000 endemic plant species and 100
endemic bird species. Even before the current palm oil and agrofuel
expansion, 66% had been destroyed.

Please write to the Colombian
government and ask them to protect the rights of indigenous, Afro-
Colombian and peasant communities affected by large-scale monoculture
plantations, to stop further deforestation for oil palm plantations,
impose a moratorium on further palm oil expansion and on the
country’s biofuel programme, which is a major cause of monoculture
expansion, and to protect the land rights, the food sovereignty and
the environment on which local communities depend. This email alert
is supported by the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace
(Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz) in Colombia.

TAKE ACTION NOW: http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=colombia_biofuel