Indonesian rubber farmers charged in gruesome killing of Bornean orangutan

JAKARTA — Police in Indonesia have arrested and charged two rubber farmers for allegedly shooting and beheading a Bornean orangutan whose body was discovered last month in a river. Investigators in Central Kalimantan province, in Indonesian Borneo, detained the two men, whose identities were not disclosed, on Jan. 29 at their homes several kilometers from where the body of the male Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) was found two weeks earlier. They were described as being independent rubber farmers. According to police, the suspects admitted to shooting the animal with an air gun and beheading it on Dec. 29, almost three weeks before the body was found. A necropsy on the body yielded 17 pellets that had ruptured the animal’s heart, lungs and stomach. The examination also showed that several of the animal’s ribs were broken. Police display an air gun and the skull believed to have belonged to the orangutan that was beheaded and shot in Central Kalimantan. Photo by Indra Nugraha/Mongabay-Indonesia. After killing the orangutan, the men allegedly threw the body in the river and buried the severed head. However, they later dug it up again after noticing a bad smell, and threw it in the river too, police said. The suspects claimed they killed the orangutan in self-defense because it had encroached onto their rubber plantation, according to police. “They tried to scare the orangutan away, but instead it went after one of them,” Pambudi Rahayu, a spokesman for the Central Kalimantan police, told Mongabay by phone. “Then the…

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