Poaching

Orangutans have been hunted for food by people either from ignorance of the law or ignoring the law because of the hunter and/or poverty. As people begin to settle into the forests, wild orangutans are tempted to wander into the gardens and farms to eat the fruit. This creates a conflict, and orangutans are often seen as pests to the people that live and farm in the area. When the adult female orangutans are killed, the babies can then be sold. The skulls of the dead orangutans may be then used to make souvenirs that are then sold illegally throughout Kalimantan (Indonesian part of Borneo). 

Extreme weather conditions, such as the El Nino storm in 2015 and the 9-month fires that raged throughout East Kalimantan, also make the poaching situation worse. The hundreds of thousands of acres of the forest in Kalimantan were destroyed, which left many wild orangutans homeless. This led the orangutans to go into the village fruit trees and plantations for safety and a place to live. These orangutans are not welcome by the people that live there, and many orangutans were killed or eaten by the starving people whose rice crops had just failed the last 2 years.