Jakarta, Oct. 17, (dpa/GNA) – Conservationists in Indonesia’s Sumatra island caught a rare Sumatran tiger which was said to have mauled two people to death, local media reported on Sunday.
Police and staff from the Jambi nature conservation agency caught the big feline in a trap in Air Batu village of Jambi’s Merangin district on Saturday and took the tiger to the agency’s wild animal sanctuary, state news agency Antara reported.
Merangin police chief Irwan Andy Purnamawan said local residents become anxious about the tiger after it attacked two villagers.
It apparently mauled and killed a 20-year-old man in Air Batu village on Wednesday when he was out searching for a cellular phone signal up on a hill.
On September 25, a man in another village was mauled to death by a tiger in the evening when he was mining for gold on a river bank.
Only a few hundred Sumatran tigers are living in the wild, but human encroachment on their natural forest habitat has pushed them to wander into human settlements in search of food.
The Sumatran tiger is the last tiger subspecies left in Indonesia, after the Javan and Bali sub species became extinct.
GNA