Hordes of Wild Pigs Make Palm Oil Even More Destructive
A new study says palm oil plantations damage the forest even beyond what they actually cut down—by fueling a boom in wild pigs.
Deep in a rainforest on the Malaysian mainland, there was a longstanding mystery to solve. Since the late 1980s, scientists working in the Pasoh Research Forest, a 1,500-acre chunk of virgin forest connected to a vast protected reserve, have noticed that the understory was disappearing. Over time, the researchers found they could walk with increasing ease through the jungle, without having to bushwhack through a tangle of seedlings and saplings. The trend was worrisome, since those young trees represent the future forest canopy.
There was an obvious culprit: wild boars. They snap off saplings to use for nests, they trample seedlings, and they churn up the soil. But why was the forest teeming with pigs? Could a decline in
