The Wasting of Borneo

Acclaimed naturalist Alex Shoumatoff issues a worldwide call to protect the drastically endangered rainforests of Borneo

In this wide-ranging narrative, seasoned travel and environmental writer Alex Shoumatoff takes readers on a journey from the woods of rural New York to the rain forests of the Amazon and Borneo, documenting both the abundance of life and the threats to these vanishing Edens.

Since growing up in the forest of Bedford, New York, Shoumatoff has built a career as an author and journalist, traveling the world to bring to light places, animals, and indigenous cultures in peril. And there is hardly any place more imperiled than Borneo. Insatiable demand for the palm oil ubiquitous in Western consumer goods is wiping out the world s most ancient and species-rich rain forest, home to the orangutan and countless other life-forms, as well as the Penan people, who are fighting for their right to exist as their home is logged and burned to make way for vast palm-oil plantations. Shoumatoff takes us to their villages and introduces us to their way of life and their habitat.

In his first book in twenty years, Shoumatoff explores what binds humans to animals, nature, and each other, and calls for Westerners to address the palm-oil crisis and protect the biodiversity that sustains us all."