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A man in
Jambi was attacked by a Sumatran tiger on Thursday, adding to a long list of
human encounters with the endangered animal that has lost much of its habitat
to encroachment and deforestation.
Sutrisno,
45, a resident of Muaro Sebo village, sustained serious wounds to his left
thigh after being attacked at 2 p.m. on Thursday.
A witness,
Dodi, said that Sutrisno was tapping for rubber in his field and noted that
there were tiger footprints on the ground. Sutrisno later took a photograph of
the footprints to alert his neighbors.
On his way
back, he came face to face with the tiger.
Sutrisno
went to reach for a wooden stick nearby but was attacked before he had could
scare the tiger off.
The man
tried to wrestle with the tiger before managing to climb a tree.
The tiger
tried to chase after him but Sutrisno prevented it from climbing by hitting the
animal repeatedly with the stick he was holding.
Several
villagers immediately chased the tiger away after Sutrisno cried for help.
“The
villagers in Muaro Sebo have now been told not to leave their houses,” Dodi
said adding that there was another villager who claimed to have spotted at
least three tigers not long before the incident.
The Jambi
Natural Resource Conservation Agency (BKSDA) immediately deployed several
officers to hunt down the tigers in a bid to relocate them away from human
settlement.
The BKSDA
has recorded several human encounters with the endangered species over the past
three weeks, saying that a recent flood might have pushed the tiger population
even closer to human habitation.
Last week,
two farmers in West Tanjung Jabung district were attacked by tigers and had to
be hospitalized. Just days later, a domesticated cow in Batanghari district was
killed and eaten by tigers.
BKSDA Jambi
chief Tri Siswo said the majority of the tiger population live inside the
Kerinci Seblat National Park, which borders three provinces — Jambi, West
Sumatra, and Bengkulu — and was heavily affected by recent floods.
Tri said
that massive deforestation was also to blame for the increasing number of
encounters with the endangered species, which is estimated to number only 30 to
40 in the entire province.
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