Savage tiger moved to safari park

Savage tiger moved to safari park

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A seven-year-old Sumatran tiger (panthera tigris Sumatraensis)
believed to have killed five people in Dumai, Riau, arrived
safely at Taman Safari Indonesia in Bogor on Tuesday at 3:30 a.m.
after a three-day trip overland.

The tiger, weighing between 100 kilograms and 120 kg, was
captured in the Basilam Baru subdistrict of Sungai Sembilan
district in Dumai, on Friday, said Yohanna Trihastuti, a
veterinarian from Taman Safari who joined the operation to save
the tiger.

"It was believed to have killed five people, one of them a
woman, and countless cattle belonging to local residents from
July to September," she told The Jakarta Post.

In August, upset residents, with the help of a local pawang
(animal tamer), launched a massive search for the feline and
caught a very young tiger, which was immediately killed despite
the fact that Sumatran tigers are one of the few species
protected under Law No. 5/1999 on conservation.

But they obviously had the wrong feline, as on Sept. 3 another
man was found dead after he was attacked by a tiger, which was
believed to be the same one that had claimed the other four
lives.

The Riau natural resources conservation office later set traps
to catch the tiger, but their efforts were in vain. Their lack of
success later led them to seek help from the Taman Safari
management in Bogor and the Forestry Agency in Jakarta.

A team to save the tiger left Jakarta on Sept. 10, and after
conducting a survey of the area, they set three traps in Kampong
Simpang Latif in the Basilam Baru subdistrict. The tiger was
caught Friday.

The local conservation agency then asked Taman Safari, which
has about 25 Sumatran tigers in its care, to keep it.

Local residents, who learned that the tiger had been caught,
demanded that the feline be put on public display for three days
before it was taken to Bogor.

"We couldn't do that as the tiger would have died from
stress," Yohanna said.

After negotiations, the team showed the tiger on Saturday on
the condition that the feline was put in a cage on a trailer,
which could be later hauled away by the vehicle that would
transport it to Bogor. The cage was later covered to minimize the
tiger's stress from being watched by people.

A number of tigers are roaming the villages as their habitat
is shrinking from rampant illegal logging.

There are 400 Sumatran tigers scattered throughout the Riau
province, according to data provided by the natural resources
conservation office.

Their numbers, however, are decreasing as many are being
poached for their fur and body parts. Out of the 65 Sumatran
tigers that were killed from 1998 to 2001, 60 of them were
poached.