National parks and other protected areas in West Africa are being decimated due to the illegal harvest of cocoa beans that ultimately satiate chocolate lovers around the world, according to a recent investigation.

Deforestation and habitat loss for chimpanzees, elephants, and other animals in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s two largest cocoa producers, is outlined in a report, Chocolate’s Dark Secret, released this month by Mighty Earth, a global environmental campaign organization that works to protect forests, conserve oceans, and address climate change.

Growers, some of whom have built settlements within protected areas, collect the cocoa, the raw material for chocolate, which makes its way to the world’s major chocolate companies – Mars, Nestle, Hershey’s, Godiva, and others – through middlemen and traders to support the $100 billion global market.

“The extent to which big chocolate brands like Mars are linked to destruction of national parks and protected areas is shocking,” Etelle Higonnet, Mighty Earth Campaign and Legal Director, said in a release. “These companies need to take immediate action to end deforestation once and for all, and remediate past damage.”

The report notes a study by Ohio State University scholars and several Ivorian academic
Institutions, which found that in seven of 23 protected areas in Ivory Coast, more than 90 percent of land mass was estimated to be covered by cocoa. As a result, chimpanzees in Ivory Coast have been pushed into just a few small pockets, and the country’s elephant population has been reduced from several hundred thousand to about 200-400, the report says. Other animals threatened include pygmy hippos, flying squirrels, pangolins, leopards, and crocodiles.

Although the Ivory Coast government recently expelled cocoa farmers from Mount Péko
National Park, staff from Mighty Earth found the park filled with cocoa operations that had returned after the eviction, with some saying they simply paid higher bribes to authorities.

Before releasing its report, Mighty Earth shared its findings of our investigation with 70 chocolate companies. In response, none denied sourcing cocoa from protected areas or disputed any of the facts presented. Some companies even acknowledged the need for further action, but few outlined specific steps they would take.

“The cocoa industry continues to exploit both forests and communities of West Africa for cocoa that is sold for large quantities of cheap, environmentally unsustainable cocoa beans. The low price of cocoa is costing us dearly here in Côte d’Ivoire in terms of deforestation and abuses of human rights,” said Sindou Bamba, general coordinator of the Coalition of Ivorian Human Rights Actors. “It is high time for the industry to start paying growers a living wage and to implement sustainable production practices to ensure the resilience of local ecosystems, because without forests we will all suffer and pay sooner or later.”

With West Africa’s forests nearing exhaustion, the chocolate industry has begun to bring its model to other rainforest regions like the Peruvian Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia’s Paradise Forests, the report says.