After suffering beatings and shootings, a tribe of orangutans has hit back and ambushed a palm oil plantation worker, pummelling him into unconsciousness and inflicting savage bites.
The day the apes struck back at humans has not surprised conservationists in the Indonesian part of Borneo island – the animals have been losing their environment to logging and palm oil companies.
Just days ago a badly wounded orangutan was found with more than 100 air gun pellets in its body and while it is now recovering, others have been beaten or shot to death.
Fightback: A tribe of orangutans ambushed a palm oil plantation worker and knocked him unconscious
The revenge on humans came when a man named only as Kurnadi was working in a palm oil plantation.
No-one witnessed the attack, but he was found later by another worker covered in bites and bruises – injuries that appeared to have been caused by a group of orangutans.
'We don’t know how many orangutans were involved in the attack, but it is clear it wasn’t just one of them,’ said an official of the local government conservation agency.
The spokesman, Hartono, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, added: ‘The man was badly injured.
Trapped: The expansion of oil palm plantations into high conservation value forests is recognised as a leading threat to critically endangered species including orangutans, elephants and tigers.
Rescued: An orangutan is carried off from his home on a stretcher. The rescues are an ongoing operation at a tiny patch of forest in Sumatra
‘Some of his fingers were nearly bitten off. He had fainted after losing a lot of blood.
‘It seems he was surrounded by a group of orangutans, but what we don’t known is whether he was trying to clear them out of the palm oil plantation.’
The conservation agency has files on shocking attacks on orangutans, carried out by palm oil plantation workers on the orders of their bosses who claim the animals are damaging their plants.
Some of the large apes have been hacked to death with machetes, while others have been gunned down or fatally beaten with clubs.
Rescue operation: An orangutan is rescued from a forest before bulldozers destroy its home
Bad day: An orangutan watches as his home is destroyed
Earlier this year the Daily Mail revealed how conservationists had stepped in at the last minute to save a mother orangutan and her baby as palm oil workers moved in for the kill.
Then this week came the distressing news of the multiple shooting of a female orangutan, which was blinded in one eye and close to death when found by conservationists with more than 100 air gun pellets in her.
Helped back to health: The female ape that was shot and blinded in one eye is on the mend
She is now returning to health in a clinic, but officials have yet to decide whether she can be released back into the wild or kept in captivity for the rest of her life.
Indonesia is the world’s largest palm oil producer – and while company profits grow the jungles in which the orangutans live continue to diminish to make way for the palm plantations.
‘The attack on the worker is perhaps an indication that the orangutan realises it must strike back to save its habitat,’ said an environmentalist in Jakarta. ‘This is not something we often hear about.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225781/Orangutans-ambushes-palm-oil-plantation-worker-knock-out.html
No comments:
Post a Comment