EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Kumai Oil Palm Plantation

Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis), Family Arecaceae
Borneo, Indonesia

Explanation:  Down toward the southern tip of the island of Boreno, Indonesia, thrives a major oil palm industry.  Here, were are in of the major oil palm plantations on the outskirts of the city of Kumai, given a tour and tutorial by the owner.  

Oil palms are native to Africa but have been introduced to parts of southeast Asia, Central America, and elsewhere.

Here, two seed heads are harvested from each tree every three years.

Seed heads from the thriving oil palms in this plantation
are gathered for processing.

Palm oil seed heads ready for further treatment.
  

Cross-section of a palm oil seed showing the rich interior
and dense husk shell.
  

The trees last about 25 years, and then are cut down and replaced.  However, this can be done for only four generations, or about 100 years, because after that the soil is so depleted, with very low soil pH, that nothing else will grow there.  So then the plantation site as a whole is converted to building construction.

The ground in a palm oil plantation is swept clean to eliminate
weeds and vegetation that can serve as habitat for destructive animals.

Dead fronds are gathered and piled (as on the right side
of the above photo) and removed from the site.

The government of Borneo has now decreed that no additional new oil palm plantations will be developed, but this does not limit the continued use of existing plantations.  At present, about 60% of Borneo is government land, so this decree affects a significant portion of the Indonesian landscape there.

One major concern with the massive expansion of oil palm plantations on Borneo is the reduction and fragmentation of the mature tropical rainforests serving as critical habitat to populations of Bornean orangutans. More than occasionally, orangutans have been observed venturing into oil palm plantations where they are sometimes captured and transferred back into their shrinking native forest environment.  At present, the overall population of orangutans on Borneo and Sumatra has been reduced to less than 60,000 individuals.  They remain a key part of the tourism industry.  

 

 

 

The oil palm industry has been characterized as being unsustainable, causing irreversible damage to mature rainforest environments.

However, there are criteria proposed for managing oil palm plantations and for the sustainable production of palm oil, under standards of "Certified Sustainable Palm Oil" or CSPO.