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By APD writer Maverick
**JAKARTA, Mar. 6 (APD) — **The recent killing of a Sumatran tiger in an Indonesia’s North Sumatra province remote village received concerns over locals’ minimum conservatory initiatives for the endangered animals, given that the species has been put in list of critically endangered animal with only up to 500 living in the wild.
The killing of the big cat occurred on Sunday morning in Hutapangan village, Batang Natal district in the province’s Mandailing Natal regency.
Reports said that the animal was killed by a gun shot by police who were insisted by locals in doing so for the fear that the animal would maul any of them if it were let alive.
After the gunshot, locals speared the helpless animal to death and hung it in a ceiling.
The gruesome photo of the lifeless animal hung in the ceiling and become a new object for the people around received great concerns among netizens in twitter social media.
Many of them conveyed their concerns on minimum conservatory initiatives among locals for the endangered animal.
“I broke in tears to see the Sumatran tiger was shot to death. It’s not its will to be born wild. Humans who were born with senses must be wiser,” a concern posted by twitter account @septyanaasih said on Monday.
“whatever the excuses are the tiger cannot be blamed. The mistake is the humans, because humans have sense and tigers don’t. The slaying against the tiger is so cruel,” said another twitter account @kuray366 to respond the killing.
Another twitter account said that police should not kill the tiger, instead they should assure locals to stay away from the tiger.
The recent tiger slaying in Indonesia occurred only a day after the United Nation’s World Wildlife Day on 3 March, themed “Big cats: predators under threat, aimed to bring attention to big cats’ declining populations” this year.
In an official statement issued by administrator of local natural conservancy agency Batang Natal National Park, the agency received the report on the presence of the tiger in a local’s house earlier in the day at 07.49 a.m.
The statement said that it has coordinated with local military and police stations to come to the location and did not order their personnel to shot or kill the animal.
“But because of the fear and anxieties developed in the location, police finally shot the animal under locals’ insistence,” the statement said.
A report said that locals believed the the big cat was a shape-shifter, locally known as siluman, related to local mythology belief. It made them insisted the police to kill the tiger.
shape-shifter | APD Photo
The official statement also mentioned that intrusion of the ill-fated tiger to the neighborhood was allegedly due to illegal logging activities around its original habitat in the nearby forest.
The provincial natural resources conservatory agency of BBKSDA was surprised to find out that parts of the tiger’s organs were missing when the agency examined the corpse of the tiger. Among the missing parts were skins in face and tails, fangs and nails in the claws.
Head of North Sumatra BBKSDA Hotmauli Sianturi said that his agency would coordinate with provincial police to investigate the missing of those tiger’s parts.
“The investigation would find out whether the it (the missing of the tiger’s parts) was related to special orders or not,” he said, adding that measures to hunt down those taking those parts would be conducted later on.
The slain tiger was burned down after undergone post mortem examination carried out by the provincial BBKSDA.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed Sumatran tiger or Panthera tigris sumatrae, as a critically endangered species, estimating that there are only about 400-500 of them remaining in their natural habitats in Sumatra forests.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
