Fat of the Land

Online only: A photo gallery of Borneo’s rainforest and pygmy elephants.

I am in need of a snack — and it seems I’m not alone. Midway through the afternoon, my blood sugar level sags to such an extent that only highly refined carbohydrates and fats will do. I push a coin through the slot, peel open the wrapper, and bite down. The soft chocolate melts on my tongue as a golden thread of caramel comes to rest upon my chin. In a few short, satisfying minutes, all will be right with the world. Then, and only then, will I return to productive life.

Hooray for the Snickers bar and the licorice twist, three cheers for Chips Ahoy! These days, those of us who partake in the occasional vending machine repast have reason to celebrate. In this age of trans fat awareness, the makers of processed foods have been reducing or eliminating that artery-clogging evil, giving us one more reason to indulge. North America’s confectioners are achieving this feat with a simple switch to palm oil — a non-genetically modified food that grows under a tropical sun. Can we at last snack in peace?

On December 12, 2005, Canada became the first country to require food processors to label for the presence of trans fats in their products. Twenty days later, the US Food and Drug Administration followed suit. Trans fats, found in vegetable shortening, margarine, crackers, candies, cookies, fried foods, baked goods, and other processed foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, raise low-density lipoprotein (ldl or “bad”) cholesterol, increasing the risk of coronary heart disease. But thanks to the new labelling regulations, consumers can now make “healthy choices.” Processed food manufacturers in Canada, meanwhile, are scrambling to replace partially hydrogenated vegetable oil with palm oil, further spurred by the federal government’s announcement in June 2007 that it would begin enforcing strict limits on trans fats within two years unless industry voluntarily complied. Problem solved, it would seem — unless you have Internet access.

According to the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, palm oil, although less harmful than oils containing trans fats, still promotes heart disease. It’s also unhealthy for wildlife. Over 80 percent of the world’s palm oil is produced in former tropical rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the only habitat of wild orangutans, Sumatran rhinoceroses, pygmy elephants, and an ark’s worth of endangered and endemic species. Between 1985 and 1997, these islands lost 60 percent of their rainforest, contributing to what the ordinarily staid World Bank refers to as “a species extinction spasm of planetary proportions.” Demand for palm oil is forecast to double by 2020, requiring about 3,000 square kilometres of new land every year — in part to support our addiction to junk food.

I never used to waste time reading labels. Life was much simpler before. Part of me — the large, lazy part — simply doesn’t want to know, especially when I’m looking for a quick sugar fix. It’s not like I’m smoking in a kindergarten or swilling martinis behind the wheel of an suv. It is, after all, only a chocolate bar. Borneo? Pygmy elephants? With cheap fuel consumed and coursing through my veins, a sweet sense of power washes over me.

A rifle is shouldered; a silent shot is fired through dense tropical air. The wrinkled rump of an elephant twitches as if to shrug off a stinging wasp. A second dart lands in close proximity, and the target — the matriarch of her clan — emits a low-frequency rumble. This distress call registers with her young male calf and her four fully grown sisters grazing nearby. The rifle is loaded and fired a third, fourth, and fifth time as her siblings flee the scene. The calf, however, nestles into his mother’s breast, awaiting a reassuring caress that fails to come. When her trunk finally goes limp, he cries out in panic. A mild dose is prepared for him and fired into his hip, sending him on a tear through the jungle. That’s when we close in.

I prefer the Latin classification, Elephas maximus borneensis. The common name, Borneo pygmy elephant, conjures a creature so petite it could curl up on the end of the couch. Not so. Although pygmy elephants are slightly smaller than mainland Asian elephants, they are still formidable beasts, reaching heights of 2.5 metres and weighing up to 2.5 tonnes. They have rounder faces, bigger ears, and longer tails than their mainland cousins, and are believed to be less aggressive. Fewer than 1,500 survive in the wild. We know little else about them.

Found only on the island of Borneo, mostly here in the Malaysian state of Sabah, pygmy elephants have long been unprotected because they were believed to be the remnants of a domesticated herd abandoned by the Sultan of Sulu in the seventeenth century. As feral animals, they were not considered a conservation priority. Then, in 2003, dna analysis conducted by the World Wildlife Fund (wwf) and Columbia University determined that they are a distinct subspecies of mainland Asian elephant — one that set out on its own evolutionary path some 300,000 years ago. Borneo’s pygmy elephants are now recognized as endangered.

Morning in Sabah’s Danum Valley Conservation Area begins with an overture of crickets followed by an avian reveille. The hoots of gibbons proclaiming their territory cut through the rising mist. From the bearded pig browsing the forest floor to the hornbill alighting twenty-five storeys above, in the crown of a tualang tree, the dense, multi-layered jungle builds life upon life into one of the world’s most luxuriant displays. The conservation area includes 438 square kilometres of protected forest, surrounded by a 10,000-square-kilometre buffer zone where “natural forest management” (which includes controlled logging) is permitted. Taken together, they constitute the largest remaining elephant habitat in Asia — an island of biodiversity in a rising palm oil sea.