Palm Oil's Forgotten Victims: Sumatran Elephants Suffer in Rush for Liquid Ivory | Link TV

There are around half a million African elephants currently left in the wild, but, by contrast, just 2500 Sumatran elephants remain today. It is - by far - the most endangered elephant in the world, but it is an animal whose fate is largely unreported to the outside world. Coincidence perhaps, or an uncomfortable truth? On my journey into the forested lands of Aceh in Sumatra, I've found that it is not poaching that is driving the Sumatran elephant to extinction, but palm oil expansion, and we are eating it, washing with it, and smearing it on our faces every single day.

Crouching low in the vines, I can smell the diesel fumes wafting up from the chainsaw that whines away just metres away from us. The sound stops, a brief pause followed by a towering crash as an ancient hardwood plummets through the canopy. This is the frontline in the struggle against palm oil, a shifting frontier that is eating away at the most bio-diverse forest on the planet, and it's a dangerous place to be.

Whispering so as not to be heard, our guides urgently beckon us away. To be spotted could be lethal - loggers here are frequently armed, a melting pot mafia of community members, freedom fighters and army personnel whose rule is the law in these remote stretches of Aceh, the Northern most province of Sumatra. This rarely-visited corner of Indonesia is home to the last great forest habitats of the Sumatran elephant in the world. And it is being destroyed for palm oil.

Palm Oil's Forgotten Victims: Sumatran Elephants Suffer in Rush for Liquid Ivory | Link TV