A man has been found dead in western Indonesia after a suspected attack by a Sumatran tiger. Authorities were still hunting, a local official said Saturday, the latest case of conflict between humans and the critically endangered species.
Only a few hundred tigers remain in the wild on the western island of Sumatra and they are often targeted by poachers for their body parts, while rampant deforestation has drastically reduced their habitat.
A team of conservationists was deployed on Saturday to search for the feline after the victim, a 26-year-old man, was found dead on Thursday afternoon on a plantation in Riau province on the island of Sumatra , with wounds indicating a tiger attack.
“Our team left this morning (in search of the tiger). According to the report, the area is in the tiger’s habitat,” Genman Suhefti Hasibuan, director of the local agency, told AFP on Saturday. nature protection.
Local police chief Budi Setiawan said Friday evening he received a report that two workers heard their friend screaming while spraying weeds in an acacia plantation.
The workers tried to search for their colleague but found tiger prints on the ground.
They reported the incident to the plantation management who deployed more people to search for the victim.
The victim’s body was later found with a severed right hand as well as bite marks on the neck, Setiawan said.
In February, at least four farmers in Indonesia’s westernmost province of Aceh were attacked by Sumatran tigers in two separate incidents.
Sumatran tigers, which are a type of Sunda Island tiger, are considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with fewer than 400 individuals remaining in the state. savage.
“The last Sunda Island tigers survive in the last patches of forest on the island of Sumatra,” according to WWF. “Accelerate deforestation and rampant poaching mean this noble creature could eventually become extinct, like its Javanese and Balinese counterparts.”
The attack in Indonesia marks at least the third time a tiger has killed a human in the past five months. In December, a Siberian tiger attacked a dog and then killed the pet owner after following its traces in Russia. Also that month, a zoo in pakistan was closed after a man was mauled to death by tigers in an attack discovered during a routine cleaning.
News Source : www.cbsnews.com
Gn world
