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Compounding threats--not just palm oil--put orangutans at risk "I like to see myself as an applied conservation scientist who seeks answers to the questions of day-to-day conservation practitioners – not science for the sake of science, but science for the sake of being used." Lately much of the concern about orangutans has focused on the impact of plantation forestry — particularly oil palm development — on orangutans and for good reason: roughly half of oil palm expansion since 1990 has occurred at the expense of natural forest, including some key orangutan habitats. But palm oil production is not the only factor, says Meijaard, who particuipated[sic] in surveys in Indonesian Borneo that found more than 1,000 orangutans are still killed annually by local people. At least half of these are killed for food. Nevertheless continuing diminishment of forests will continue to imperil sizable populations of orangutans.