19/10/2007 (Chicago Sun-Times) - Studies conflict on the health benefits of palm oil, but experts meeting at the Brookfield Zoo said Thursday it's bad for one species: orangutans.

The animals' natural habitats, island rain forests in Southeast Asia, are being cleared in order to harvest the wood and make land available for palm oil production.

Palm oil -- used in foods such as crackers, frozen dinners and popcorn, as well as some cosmetics -- is high in saturated fat but has been touted as low in trans fat.

An estimated one in 10 supermarket products contains palm oil, and now there is a growing demand for the product for use in biofuels.

Rather than advising boycotts of products using palm oil, the experts meeting at the zoo touted firms that use the oil produced on environmentally sensitive plantations.

The world's largest tree-dwelling mammals, orangutans are currently found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

Ian Singleton of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program estimated there are only about 6,700 in Sumatra and 55,000 in Borneo -- down from 83,000 and 230,000 respectively a century ago.

Orangutan males stand more than 5 feet tall and weigh more than 200 pounds. They use extra-long arms, which can measure 6 feet, and hook-like feet to move from tree to tree.

Finding those trees can be a problem.

Orangutans have lost about 80 percent of their habitat in the last 20 years, and some researchers believe that orangutans in the wild may face extinction in as little as a decade.

Serge Wich, an orangutan researcher from Sumatra and the keynote speaker at the Brookfield gathering, which drew more than 100 experts from around the world, complained of "cowboy operators" in Indonesia who unconsciously clear-cut forests to feed the exploding market for palm oil, which is made from the palm tree's seeds and fruit.

Urging consumers to use "sustainable yield brands,'' produced by firms that are careful in plantation operations, Brookfield Zoo conservation biologist Robert Lacy noted, "Orangutans can't do a very job speaking for themselves.''