Vulnerable tropical forests and species on four continents face increased risk of loss due to growing global demand for palm oil, a new study finds. As palm oil production expands from Southeast Asia into the Americas and Africa, large areas of tropical forest are being converted into oil palm plantations in 43 countries, according to researchers at Duke University who published their findings on July 27 in the journal PLOS ONE. “Almost all oil palm is grown in places that once were tropical forests. Clearing these forests threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions,” said Varsha Vijay, a doctoral student at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment who led the study. Using 25 years of high-resolution satellite imagery from Google Earth and Landsat, Vijay and her team tracked the extent of palmoil-driven deforestation in four regions: Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and Mesoamerica. They then compared the data to countrywide trends in FAO data for oil palm planted area. Rates of recent deforestation have been highest in Southeast Asia and South America, particularly Indonesia, Ecuador and Peru, where more than half of all oil palms are grown on land cleared since 1989, they found. In Southeast Asia, 45% of sampled oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. For South America, the percentage was 31%. By contrast, in Mesoamerica and Africa, the researchers observed only 2% and 7% of oil palm plantations coming from areas that were forest in 1989. The researchers warn that vulnerable forests in all four regions of palmoil production contain many species at risk of extinction. “While the Amazon and Indonesia have many species of globally threatened mammals and birds, other areas such as the Congo Basin and the coastal forests of Colombia are home to species with small ranges that make them especially vulnerable to habitat loss despite not being classified as threatened or endangered,” said Stuart Pimm, one of the authors. “This needs to be considered in conservation planning.” Since the biodiversity impacts of this expansion are very different from country to country and region to region, local conservation strategies, tailored to each region’s differing threats, will be needed to protect at-risk species, the authors conclude. (ab)