Palm oil companies offering rewards for killing orangutans

Photographs taken at the scene show the terrified mother cuddling and comforting her young daughter. The mother was found to be pregnant.

January 2012. On Sunday January 22nd FOUR PAWS rescued two orangutans (mother and daughter) from almost certain death at the hands of local people who have been paid by palm oil companies to hunt down and slaughter the animals.

The FOUR PAWS team has moved the orangutan mother and her daughter in to a remote and safe area of the rainforest and released them there into the wild. The mother has been equipped with radio transmitters to enable monitoring of them both to ensure they are adapting well to the new environment.

Before finding the mother and daughter FOUR PAWS had scoured the area for orangutans in imminent danger from attack. Sadly no other orangutans had survived the earlier slaughter.

Huge drop in numbers
Orangutans, very close relatives of humans, are threatened by losing their entire habitat due to rainforest deforestation. A few decades ago there were 250,000 orangutans. Today there are just 50,000. But deforestation is not the only threat: Some palm oil companies are determined to rid the newly created farmland of orangutans that they see as a pest.

The orangutan massacres have recently come to the attention of the media in Indonesia. For the first time authorities have decided to arrest people including a senior manager at one oil palm company called Khaleda. It is alleged that Khaleda had offered a reward of 1million Indonesian Rupiah (£70) for each orangutan killed.

Orangutans surrounded by workers on a palm oil plantation.

Orangutangs treated as pests
Over the course of the last couple of years hundreds of rewards have been claimed. The allegations are that certain palm oil companies paid up to £70 to their employees for the killing of orangutans found in their plantations. At first these stories were denied. However last September graves and bones were found by investigators and the scandal has now hit the Indonesian media with the welfare of wild orangutans quickly becoming a major political issue.

Little law enforcement
Killing orangutans is illegal in Indonesia, but the law is lacking enforcement. Before November 2011 only two low level arrests had ever been made. In the last two months 10 more arrests have taken place including the arrest of the senior manager of the plantation where the worst graves have been found.

Babies sold as pets
With so many adult orangutans being slaughtered the hunters keep the babies alive and sell them to the pet trade. FOUR PAWS and its partner BOS do everything they can to rescue the traumatised little babies who are being illegally kept as pets. The orphans are then taken to the Samboja orangutan sanctuary where they are taught skills they will need in order to return to the wild and fend for themselves.

"Our investigation could not have been more timely. It is extremely fortunate we arrived when we did - a few minutes later and the orangutans could have been dead", said Dr. Signe Preuschoft, FOUR PAWS' primate expert. "We discovered a gang of young men surrounding the two orangutans. Both victims were clearly petrified. We hope that the public attention to our rescue action will help many more orangutans than the two we are about to release.

"For the first time in Indonesian history, the fate of the orangutan has become a genuine political issue. The massacres must not be allowed to continue. Orangutan habitat in the lowland rainforests needs adequate protection. Those breaking the law should be paying for their crimes, not charities and most of all not the orangutans themselves."