Palm oil risks all Sarawak peat forests by 2020, says study: HOW ABOUT WILDLIFE SUCH AS HORN BILLS

Sarawak’s rapid expansion of oil palm plantations may result in its unique peat forests being wiped out by the end of the decade, says environmental watchdog Wetlands International.

The Netherlands-based group claimed Sarawak had destroyed nearly 800,000 hectares or 10 per cent of its entire forest in the past five years, nearly four times faster than the rest of Asia which lost 2.8 per cent of its forests in the same period.

The loss included over a third of the one million hectares of peat in Malaysia’s largest state that was drained and cleared between 2005 and 2010 alone for the plantations,