Planet Without Apes Book Review

This book review comes from author Craig B. Stanford, and is titled Planet Without Apes. This book takes a deep dive into ape conservation and just about everything else surrounding the subject matter. Starting with the palm oil industry, to understand the connection between palm oil production and the decline of the orangutan populations, one must first begin to understand the location of where orangutans live. Orangutans live in both Sumatra and Indonesia, but to be specific, Craig B. Stanford notes on page forty-eight “the percentage of wild orangutans living on protected land in Indonesia (about twenty-five percent) is still higher than the number of gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos living on protected land in Africa” (Stanford, pg. 48). Clearly, then, there seems to be a larger concentration of Orangutans within this region. So, how does palm oil production lead to the decline of the Orangutan? Stanford notes on the same page that “[palm oil] is big, big business,” and to increase the risks facing these endangered mammals “Indonesia and Malaysia produce most of the world's palm oil” (Stanford, pg. 48). It is safe to assume most people are aware of the dangers logging industries pose on any animal, but what is not considered in mainstream media is the wildlife that is left to be “conserved and protected.” Where specifically, and outlined on page forty-nine, “many areas of Malaysia and Indonesia plantations form a crazy quilt that carves up forest, leaving small remnants of Orangutans and other wildlife with no viable future” (Stanford, pg. 49).
Keeping in mind that Orangutans are highly concentrated from the same region which also has a high demand for palm tree oil, the devastation is remarkably grotesque at an astounding “twelve million hectares of [Sumatran] forest . . . This represents about half of the forest remaining” (Stanford, pg. 52). Considering the high concentration of Orangutans within a region that has highly concentrated business models for palm oil; factor in the demand of the western nations that can afford such services, the relationship between Orangutans and the palm oil industry is a toxic one. If the relationship between Orangutans and the palm oil industry were a toxic one, then the most analogous to the two would be the relationship between the Chimpanzee and bushmeat.