The habitat of these magnificent apes is being replaced by palm oil plantations whose owners pay a bounty for ridding this already endangered species
I have a great affinity for the ‘Red Apes,’ having worked with them during my years as a volunteer in the primate section of the Houston Zoo. Orangutans are the most intelligent of all primates. In the wild, they nest and spend most of their time in trees. While fruits are the mainstay of their diets, they also eat tree bark and leaves. They first became endangered through the deforestation for lumber of their rainforest habitat. In recent years, the introduction of palm oil plantations in the deforested areas has hastened their extinction.
BLIND IN ONE EYE, THE ORANGUTAN FIGHTING FOR LIFE AFTER BEING SHOT MORE THAN 100 TIMES BY PALM OIL PLANTATION THUGS
Rescue workers are fighting to save her life as pellets hit near heart
By Richard Shears
Mail Online
October 27, 2012
An endangered orangutan is fighting for life after being shot more than 100 times with an air rifle in a cruel attack.
The female ape, called Aan,has been blinded in one eye and has sustained other serious wounds to her body after being struck repeatedly by pellets.
She was hit 37 times in the head by the lead slugs, while 67 projectiles penetrated other parts of her body in the shooting, which took place in an oil palm plantation in the Indonesian part of Borneo.
'We're amazed, but truly thankful, that she has managed to cheat death – but it has been touch and go', said a local conservationist.
The savage attack is yet another incident in a catalogue of cruelty against the large apes which are being targeted by vigilantes working for oil plantation owners.
As their forest habitat has dwindled with trees being chopped down for the forestry industries, orangutans have encroached onto oil plantations and other properties looking for food.
Earlier this year the Daily Mail revealed the story of a mother orangutan photographed with her arms around a baby ape as hunters working for their oil plantation boss moved in for the kill.
Fortunately conservationists were able to save her before any harm came to her or the infant and they were moved to another location.
But Aan has not been so lucky. Conservationists said the only good news to emerge from the incident is that she has survived and has started to eat at a clinic where the pellets are still being removed from her.
Aan’s recovery is being aided by volunteers from the British-based Orangutan Foundation, but they are concerned she could die from infections caused by the wounds to her head, as well as those near her heart and lungs.
The head of the local conservation agency, Hartono, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said: 'Even though she is eating, she is still, technically, fighting for her life.
'She has been very seriously injured and she could relapse at any moment. But she’s a true fighter. She’s fighting very hard.'
Added to the fears that Aan could still die are concerns that should she survive she might lose the sight in her remaining eye and her hearing could be affected.
If she survives, conservationists fear she will never be able to be released back into her slowly diminishing world in the wild.
She would be an easy target for hunters once again and she would have problems finding food.
But keeping her in captivity would also cause her distress as she would want to return to a mate or an extended family still in the jungle.
Rangers from the conservation group found Aan struggling through grassland on the outskirts of an oil plantation and managed to catch her and take her to a clinic.
'The next few weeks are touch and go,’ said Hartono. 'We are all praying for her.'
Six months ago four men were sent to jail for eight months for shooting and beating to death three orangutans and long-nosed monkeys in East Kalimantan – the Indonesian part of Borneo, the large island that is shared with Malaysia.
It was revealed after their arrest that the owners of a Malaysian oil company had paid them to drive the apes away from a plantation.
Just 50,000 to 60,000 of the two species of orangutans are left in the wild, 80 per cent of them in Indonesia and the remainder in Malaysia.
International conservation groups are worried the animals are faced with extinction from poaching and the rapid destruction of their forest habitat, which is being swallowed up by palm oil plantations.
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