ROKAN HULU/PADANG/CENTRAL ACEH, Indonesia — In separate incidents in early March, officials across three Indonesian provinces rescued a critically endangered Sumatran tiger with its leg amputated, arrested six people for butchering another of the big cats, and detained five suspects in rural Aceh allegedly selling tiger body parts. The spate of arrests began on March 2 in the highlands of Sumatra’s Riau province, after conservation agency officials received a report of a Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) caught in a snare trap in Tibawan village, Rokan Hulu district. The officials, based in Pekanbaru, the provincial capital, asked local leaders, including the police, to secure the location as they made the eight-hour drive to Tibawan. When they arrived the next morning, however, they found an empty snare and signs someone had used a machete to beat a path through the forest. Blood spots and car tire tracks were nearby. The subsequent investigation focused on a group of men believed to have approached the location at around 10 p.m., about one hour before the officials departed from Pekanbaru. Inquiries led investigators to a black minivan seen at a car wash in Ujung Batu, the largest town in Rokan Hulu district. Police pulled it over and detained its three occupants. “The back of that car was full of animal feces,” one officer told Mongabay Indonesia. Officers arrested two more people, around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the trap, who had allegedly skinned and chopped up the tiger, storing the body parts in plastic…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Snared, skinned, sold: Brutal March for Indonesia’s Sumatran tigers
