Such practices, never before quantified, are now believed to be a more serious threat to the existence of the red apes than previously thought.
Indonesia — home to 90 percent of the orangutans left in the wild — was blanketed with plush rain forests less than 50 years ago, but half those trees have since been cleared in the rush to supply the world with timber, pulp, paper and more recently, palm oil.
As a result, most of the remaining 50,000 to 60,000 apes live in scattered, degraded forests, putting them in frequent, and often deadly, conflict with humans.
“But our surveys also indicate that killing of orangutans is happening deep inside forested areas, where orangutans are hunted just like any other species.
The Nature Conservancy and 19 other private organizations, including the WWF and the Association of Indonesian Primate Experts and Observers, carried out the survey to get a better understanding of orangutan killings and their underlying causes.
They interviewed 6,983 people in 687 villages in three provinces of Kalimantan — the Indonesian side of Borneo, which is shared also with Malaysia and Brunei — between April 2008 and September 2009.
Figures from the interviews were extrapolated to the target population of men 15 years and older, since only 11 women reported killing orangutans. This indicated that at least 750 apes had been killed during the previous year.
Some were consumed after being killed for entering crops or because people were afraid of the animals, the study showed. Others were hunted outright for their meat.
Indonesian Forestry Ministry spokesman Ahmad Fauzi Masyhud said his office has not yet received the report, which he described as “bombastic.”
“We have to recheck whether it is true or not,” he said.