Jakarta Globe - AFP, July 2, 2013
Indonesian activists wearing orangutan costumes display placards during a protest in front of the Presidential palace in Jakarta on March 14, 2013. (AFP Photo / Bay Ismoyo) |
Indonesian
villagers have beaten a Sumatran orangutan to death, an animal protection group
said Tuesday, the latest case of one of the critically-endangered primates
being killed by humans.
The adult
female died Thursday after being rescued from a village in Aceh province with
numerous injuries by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program.
Group
director Ian Singleton said the primate was found with swelling to its head and
body, a serious eye injury and bleeding under the skin around its jaw.
“The only
way you would ever gain control of a wild adult orangutan is to beat and club
it until it is barely conscious, or dead,” he told AFP.
He said it
was not clear why the animal was killed.
In some
cases, people kill female orangutans when the apes are trying to stop their
offspring being taken away to be sold as pets, he said, although in this case
no baby was found.
Orangutans
have also been attacked by workers on palm oil and paper plantations on their
native Sumatra island who view them as pests.
Orangutans
being killed by humans was “still a very common occurrence in Indonesia”, he
said.
Amon
Zamora, the head of Aceh’s conservation agency, said the authorities were
investigating the case and it would take some time.
“Capturing
orangutans for sale or as pets and harming them is certainly against the law,”
he told AFP.
Only around
7,300 Sumatran orangutans remain in the wild, according to protection group the
International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Orangutans
are faced with extinction from poaching and the rapid destruction of their
forest habitat, driven largely by land clearance for palm oil and paper
plantations.
Agence France-Presse
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