Orang-utans being poached for the black market is prevalent in Indonesia. According to WWF, it is estimated that between 250 to 1000 orang-utans are captured and sold on the black market every year. Orang-utans are killed directly for their meat, their body parts are used for medicinal products and the babies are captured and sold as exotic pets.
Though it is against the law to sell, capture or kill orang-utans, people still do it because it is easy money. As the standard of living in Indonesia is very bad, earning an extra 20 US Dollars could possibly feed a family for weeks. Thus, the temptation to hunt and sell was something difficult to resist.
The rise of orang-utans to be kept as pets was a result of a Taiwanese television program which showed that a baby orang-utan was the perfect pet as it was cute and cuddly. Thus, there was a demand for baby orang-utans to be kept as pets which led to the rise of the illegal pet trade.
In order to capture a baby orang-utan, the mother has to be killed first so that it makes the capturing process easier for the poachers. According to experts, on average 2 adults are killed in order to secure a baby. The babies go through a very torturous journey as they are smuggled out of Borneo/Sumatra and not all babies will survive the journey. Eventually those that make it alive to their “pet owners” will grow up to be big and it becomes unmanageable, leaving many of these orang-utans with poor nutrition and serious health problems.
There is also trade in dead orang-utan parts in Borneo and Sumatra. When orang-utan skulls are sold, they can fetch up to 70 US Dollars in towns.
Due to all these activities threatening the orang-utan population, it causes the population of orang-utans to drop drastically. Furthermore, female orang-utans have a very slow reproduction process where they only give birth once in 8 or 9 years. This prevents the orang-utan population from gaining a large size in a short period of time.