The body of a person has been present in western Indonesia after an apparent attack by a Sumatran tiger. Authorities were still hunting, an area official said Saturday, the most recent case of conflict between humans and a critically endangered species.
Only a number of hundred tigers remain within the wild on the western island of Sumatra, they usually are sometimes targeted by poachers for body parts, and rampant deforestation has significantly reduced their habitat.
A team of conservationists was dispatched to go looking for the large cat on Saturday after a 26-year-old man was found dead with wounds consistent with a tiger attack on a plantation in Sumatra’s Riau province on Thursday afternoon.
“Our team set off this morning [to search for the tiger]. The report shows that the world is inside a tiger habitat,” said Genman Suhefti Hasibuan, head of the local nature conservation agency, on Saturday.
Local police chief Budi Setiawan said he received a report late Friday that two employees heard their friend screaming while they were spraying an acacia plantation.
Employees tried to look for his or her colleague, but as an alternative found tiger footprints on the bottom. They reported the incident to the plantation management, who sent more people to go looking for the victim.
Setiawan said the victim’s body was later found together with his right hand severed and bite wounds on his neck.
In February, a minimum of 4 farmers in Indonesia’s westernmost province of Aceh were attacked by Sumatran tigers in two separate incidents.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers Sumatran tigers to be critically endangered, with fewer than 400 remaining within the wild.
