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Endangered Sumatran tiger kills teenager in Indonesia

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3 years ago

August 30, 2021

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An official on Monday reported that a 16-year-old boy was killed by an endangered Sumatran tiger in Indonesia’s Riau province.

Muhammad Mahfud, an official at the provincial Nature Conservation Agency said the boy was accompanying his father who was working in a palm oil plantation in Siak district when he was mauled by the tiger on Sunday.

“We have set up a box trap so that the tiger can be relocated elsewhere,” Mahfud said.

The incident came less than a week after a mother tiger and her two cubs were killed after they were caught in a wire trap in Aceh, another province on Sumatra Island.

The Sumatran tiger is the only tiger subspecies left in Indonesia after the tigers on the islands of Java and Bali became extinct years ago.

There are only about 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, and their population is dwindling due to poaching and the loss of natural habitat caused by rapid deforestation for palm oil plantations.