AFP 7 Feb 18;
The body of a Borneo orangutan has been found riddled with some 130 airgun pellets, Indonesian authorities said Wednesday, the latest fatal attack on the critically endangered species.
The male orangutan, which also showed signs of a machete wounds, was found by villagers in Borneo's East Kutai district this week, police said, adding that an autopsy had been done on the mutilated primate.
"We found pellets all over its body. There were also a number of cut wounds that could have been caused by a machete," said local police chief Dedi Agustono, who added that the killer remained at large.
"It is the most bullet wounds we have ever seen on an orangutan," he added. Most of the pellets were lodged in the animal's head and around its eyes.
The gruesome killing comes about a week after Borneo police arrested two rubber plantation workers and accused them of shooting an orangutan multiple times and then decapitating it.
The orangutan's headless body had been found floating in a river on the island, which is shared with Malaysia. The Indonesian portion of Borneo is called Kalimantan.
Bornean and Sumatran orangutans are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The Sumatran orangutan population is estimated to be just under 15,000, while about 54,000 orangutans are thought to live in Borneo, according to the IUCN.
Rampant logging and the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations have been blamed for destroying their jungle habitat, leading to numerous conflicts with humans.
Plantation workers and villagers are sometimes known to attack an animal that they see as a pest, while poachers also capture them to sell as pets.
Most orangutan killings are not solved, said Ramadhani, a manager at the Centre for Orangutan Protection which helped with the autopsy.
"We are pushing law enforcement to solve the case as soon as possible," added the conservationist, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
East Kalimantan orangutan dies from multiple gunshot, stab wounds
Gemma Holliani Cahya The Jakarta Post 7 Feb 18;
An orangutan was found with gunshot and stab wounds on Sunday in Teluk Pandan village in the East Kutai regency of East Kalimantan, only three weeks after an orangutan was found beheaded in Central Kalimantan. The great ape later died following emergency treatment.
The sub-adult orangutan, who was 5 to 7 years old, was found by villagers on Sunday evening and evacuated by the Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) to Pupuk Kaltim hospital on Monday morning. He was found in critical condition in a tree in the middle of a lake near the border of Kutai National Park.
Doctors at the hospital found dozens of old and new wounds from an airsoft gun all over the great ape's body, 74 of them in his head. They also found 19 fresh stab wounds on his body. The orangutan's left foot had been cut off.
The orangutan died on Tuesday morning after 12 hours of surgery and treatment at Pupuk Kaltim hospital.
“There were 130 pellets found in his body. This is the largest number of pellets we have ever found in a case of an orangutan shooting. In 2013 in Central Kalimantan, we found 103 pellets in an orangutan's body,” COP spokesperson Ramadhani told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Ramadhani said that an autopsy found that the wounds in the orangutan showed that the endangered animal had been injured on several different occasions.
“You can see that the cut on his left foot was dry. This shows that it happened some time ago. Dozens of pellet wounds have dried too. But others were still new, the stab wounds are also new,” he said.
The COP is calling the case the "second Kaluhara", because a similar incident occurred in the same village in May 2016.
“In the first Kaluhara [case] in 2016, we found a blind orangutan in critical condition in East Kutai, also near Kutai National Park. We could see from his wounds that the older ones had made him blind, and the new wounds killed him,” Ramadhani said.
The COP has recorded 25 orangutan shooting cases since 2012. Seven of these cases occurred in East Kalimantan, four in Central Kalimantan, two in West Kalimantan and the remaining 12 cases in Sumatra.
“There have been seven orangutan shooting cases in East Kalimantan since 2012, but no one has ever been arrested for it,” Ramadhani said, “If [the authorities] were truly concerned about it, they could arrest the culprits easily. East Kalimantan’s law enforcers and East Kalimantan Environment and Forestry agency should be more serious in handling this case.”
“There must be stronger efforts by law enforcement regarding the orangutan issue,” the chief executive officer of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF), Jamartin Sihite, told the Post on Wednesday.
Kalimantan orangutans are threatened with extinction not only from the degradation and conversion of their forest habitat, but also from poaching. In the wild, orangutans can live up to 45 years.
The BOSF said that in the last 12 years, the orangutan population in Kalimantan had decreased by half.
Based on its 2004 Population and Habitat Viability Assessment (PHVA), 54,817 orangutans populated an 8.1 million-hectare area in Kalimantan. The 2016 PHVA covered an area of 16 million hectares in Kalimantan and found that the orangutan population had fallen to 57,350. (dmr)
Police name five people as suspects in killing of orangutan
Ade P Marboen Antara 17 Feb 18;
Samarinda, East Kalimantan (ANTARA News) - The police in Kutai Timur, East Kalimantan, have named five people as suspects behind the death of an orangutan by shooting in the Kutai National Park.
Chief of the Kutai Timur police resort Senior Adjunct Commissioner Teddy Ristiawan stated here on Saturday that all suspects living near the location where the orangutan's body was found were arrested on Thursday.
"After intensively questioning them, they were declared as suspects on Friday," he noted.
The arrests of the five suspects were made eight days after the police conducted an investigation into the death of the primate found with some 130 air gun bullets in its body.
"They are crop farmers and know that hurting orangutans is against the law. They shot the animal, as it had damaged their crops," he noted.
Nasir, 55; Andi, 37, Nasir's in-law; Rustam, 37, Nasir's son; Hendri, 13, Andi's younger brother; and Muis, 36, Nasir's neighbor, are currently being held at the Kutai Timur police station.
"We have confiscated four guns from them as evidence. We held the adults but not the underage child," he noted.
The suspects have allegedly violated Law Number 5 of 1990 on the conservation of natural resources and the ecosystem.
"They face a maximum jail term of five years and a fine of Rp100 million," he noted.
The primate, aged around five to seven years, was discovered in a wounded state by villagers on Saturday (Feb 3) at the Kutai National Park area in Teluk Pandan Village, Kutai Timur District.
The park rangers immediately evacuated the animal after receiving a report about it for treatment. However, the orangutan succumbed to serious injuries on Tuesday (Feb 2) at around 1:55 a.m. local time.
A team of doctors was only able to remove 48 out of around 130 bullets found lodged mostly in the head of the animal during an operation that lasted from Tuesday night through Wednesday morning.
Doctors also discovered at least 19 old and new sharp object wounds on the body of the animal.
Editor: Ade P Marboen
