29/03/2011 (Patch.com) - Madison Vorva of Plymouth and Rhiannon Tomtishen of Ann Arbor have partnered with the Rainforest Action Network to get the Girl Scouts organization to stop using palm oil in its famous cookies.

In 2007, Madison Vorva of Plymouth and Rhiannon Tomtishen of Ann Arbor were just two sixth-graders at Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, active in Girl Scouts and interested in animals.

Today, they're making waves in the Girl Scout community, having just pioneered a partnership with the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), an activist group focused on saving and regrowing rainforests, and leading a campaign to change the way the Girls Scouts USA makes its famous cookies.

It all started when they were in fifth grade and, inspired by the work of Dr. Jane Goodall, the two girls decided to do a research project on endangered orangutans in Borneo and apply for the Girl Scout Bronze Award, the highest award a Girl Scout Junior can receive.

Goodall, a primatologist and anthropologist, is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. She is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

During the process of researching, Madison and Rhiannon learned that the expansion of palm oil plantations is a primary cause of rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia, the only places in the world where orangutans are found in their natural habitats.

Then came the big surprise: Girl Scout cookies, the same ones they had been selling for their own troops for years, list palm oil as a major ingredient.

"Basically, we met the necessary requirements for the award, but then we discovered palm oil was in Girl Scout cookies," Madison said. "That's when we started our campaign."

Throughout the next few years after getting the Bronze Award, Madison and Rhiannon tried to persuade Girl Scout executives to swap palm oil for a more sustainable ingredient, such as canola or sunflower oil, by writing letters and making presentations. The most recent step in their campaign was to reach out to RAN to help them organize a campaign for other Girl Scouts to follow.

On Monday, RAN launched a video call to action from the young activists as well as an educational website featuring a renegade Girl Scouts merit badge called the Rainforest Hero Badge.

"We're so thrilled that RAN has partnered with us," Rhiannon said. "I think it makes even more people realize how important this issue is."

The girls, now 15 and sophomores at Greenhill, also achieved a small success this month when Kellogg, one of two major companies that produce Girl Scout cookies, announced that it would buy "Green Palm" certificates to cover 100 percent of its palm oil use.

The money goes to support sustainable palm oil production, but it does not ensure that the palm oil used by Kellogg is sustainable.

"The problem right now is that all palm oil gets mixed together eventually, and there's no way to track which oil is produced sustainably and which isn't," Rhiannon said. "It's a great step in the right direction, but it's not really a solution to this issue."

Madison and Rhiannon said they plan to see the issue through as far as they can. Today, both girls are Juliette Girls Scouts, which means they do not belong to a troop, but are still members of the Girl Scouts USA.

"We started this project to get the Bronze Award and because we were interested in animals," Rhiannon said. "But then it became about so much more than that — the environment and the local people, too."

Madison said she thinks this experience will carry over into her career, which she hopes involves some combination of writing, activism and politics.

"It's kind of hard to know exactly what I want to do," Madison said. "But through this we've learned that anyone, even young kids, can be leaders.