A baby Indonesia orangutan leans against an adult. Orangutans are native only to Indonesia and Malaysia. The endangered great apes have lost much of their habitat to deforestation. Photo: Stanislav Fosenbauer / My Shot

Jakarta, 2 July 2013 (AFP) – 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 Programme. 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. […] 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. [more]

Sumatran orangutan beaten to death: group