Tourist busted for drugging and attempting to smuggle an orangutan from Indonesia

Orangutans are increasingly squeezed, their territory narrower by the opening of palm oil fields.
By Christian Fleetwood


A Russian citizen is facing five years in prison after being accused of attempting to smuggle an orangutan from Indonesia.

Andrei Zhestkov is facing a maximum of five years imprisonment, following his arrest on Friday 22 March, after quarantine authorities at Ngurah Rai International Airport discovered a drugged baby orangutan, along with two geckos and four chameleons in the accused’s luggage.

Indonesian authorities have confirmed the accused will front charges under the Conservation of Living Resources and their Ecosystems Act 1990, according to The Jakarta Post.

“The Russian deliberately used an inhumane method to take the orangutan to Russia,” Ngurah Rai International Airport quarantine office head Dewa Delanata said on Saturday.

The discovery was reported to the police, the Quarantine Office and the Natural Resources Conservation Agency.

Source: The Jakarta Post.

Source: The Jakarta Post.

“We believe the orangutan was fed allergy pills which caused him to sleep. We found the pills inside the suitcase,”  Bali conservation agency official I Ketut Catur Marbawa said.

“[Zhestkov] seemed prepared, like he was transporting a baby.”

The accused told authorities that the orangutan was gifted by his friend, The Guardian reported; another Russian tourist who bought the primate for $3,000 from a street market in Java.

The accused claimed his friend convinced him he could bring the orangutan home to Russia as a pet.

Orangutans are a critically endangered species, according to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), with fewer than 130,000 in the wild. A century ago, there were estimated to be more than 230,000 orangutans.

While deforestation and habitat loss throughout Indonesia have played major roles in the decline of orangutans, hunting, the illegal wildlife trade and exotic animal trafficking remain major problems for their conservation.

According to TRAFFIC, a joint program of WWF and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the illegal wildlife trade is one of the main reasons that many species are endangered.

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