For most species extinction per hectare Palm oil is better than any other

A new study released in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution
finds that while palm oil may pose the most direct threat to the
highest number of endangered species on earth, most people are unaware
of the danger. Palm oil producers are adopting the tried and true
techniques of coal and oil producers to greenwash the damage their
products are doing. “Why have efforts by conservationists failed to
halt the expansion of oil palm plantations at the expense of tropical
forests?

We contend that part of the reason could be the aggressive
public relations campaigns undertaken by the oil palm industry to
promote public acceptance of palm oil and to dismiss the concerns of
conservation biologists and environmentalists,” Koh and Wilcove write.
“It is not unlike the campaign that some energy companies waged
against efforts to curb global climate change.”

All of this is even
more problematic since the new Obama administration has jumped on the
agrofuels bandwagon – and plans to double our nation’s investment in
so-called biofuels as part of his overall environmental strategy.
Agrofuels are one of the major forces driving the increased production
of palm oil in Southeast Asia and in Latin America. We need new
policies limiting agrofuels and their negative environmental and
social consequences, not policies requiring more of them.
http://understory.ran.org/2009/01/26/disinformation-enables-deforestation/

As of 2006, the cumulative land area of palm oil plantations is
approximately 11 million hectares.[14] In 2005 the Malaysian Palm Oil
Association, responsible for about half of the world’s crop, estimated
that they manage about half a billion perennial carbon-sequestering
palm trees.[8] Demand for palm oil has been rising and is expected to
climb further. This rising demand is resulting in tropical forest
being cleared to establish new palm plantations.

According to
UNEP,[15] at the current rate of intrusion into Indonesian national
parks, it is likely that many protected rain forests will be severely
degraded by 2012 through illegal hunting and trade, logging, and
forest fires, including those associated with the rapid spread of palm
oil plantations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil