Local Girl Scouts Lead Charge Against Palm Oil to Protect Rainforests

For the last seven years, 18-year-old Madison Vorva of Plymouth and 17-year-old Rhiannon Tomtishen of Ann Arbor, both Girl Scouts, have fought against palm oil companies to save the rainforest and the endangered species that live there.

It all started when the pair partnered together to earn their Girl Scout Bronze Award by researching endangered orangutans in Borneo after taking inspiration from Jane Goodall.

"When we started, it was just to earn our Girl Scout Bronze Award," Rhiannon said. "That required 40 hours of service and I think we both kind of thought that we would do that and be done. But we discovered that the Girl Scout organization that we'd been involved with since childhood had been contributing to rainforest destruction, we became really, really passionate about this issue."

The pair spent last Thursday at Kellogg's headquarters in Battle Creek delivering petitions with more than 117,000 signatures urging the cereal company to end its new partnership with Wilmar International, the world's largest palm oil trader. 

"As we've grown along the way, we've realized that changing just Girl Scout cookies is not enough," Rhiannon said. "We need to have major US companies like Kellogg change their practices. And that's sort of where we've branched out into other avenues of advocacy." 

They've branched out by calling on First Lady Michelle Obama to weigh in on the issue, meeting with President of the Environmental Protection Agency and being honored as United Nations' North American Forest Heroes. 

They also succeeded in having Girl Scouts USA adopt a palm oil policy in 2011, which the ladies say is just a step in the right direction and not strong enough. 

Both Madison and Rhiannon will begin their next adventures apart. Madison embarks for Pomona College in California this fall, where she plans on studying environmental analysis in order to pursue an academic approach to her activism. 

Rhiannon plans on taking a year off for service and travel, then plans to attend Stanford next fall. She said she is leaning towards studying international relations.

"Just because Madison and I have seen just how much power businesses have in the world to effect environmental and social issues," she said. "So I'd really love to be on the other end of things, coming at that from an international perspective."

College and traveling will not interfere with their mission to end deforestation, though. 

"It's not going to be the exact same way we've worked with each other in the past, but most of our campaigns have been online and easily accessible from lots of different places," Madison said. "So hopefully, we'll just keep charging forward and hopefully continue our discussions with Girls Scouts USA and not give up until we see that they have a truly free deforestation palm oil policy."