Guest guest Posted October 9, 2002 Report Share Posted October 9, 2002 Savage tiger moved to safari park. 10/09/2002 Jakarta Post P8 © 2002 The Jakarta Post 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. Copyright 2002 The Jakarta Post. Folder Name: Asia Conservation Tiger Relevance Score on Scale of 100: 99 ____________________ To review or revise your folder, visit http://www.djinteractive.com or contact Dow Jones Customer Service by e-mail at custom.news or by phone at 800-369-7466. (Outside the U.S. and Canada, call 609-452-1511 or contact your local sales representative.) ____________________ Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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