A court in Indonesia has sentenced a man to five years in prison for the killing of a critically endangered Sumatran tiger in September last year in North Sumatra province.
“As far as I know, it’s the heaviest sentence ever imposed for crimes involving protected wildlife in Indonesia,” Iding Achmad Haidir, chair of the Sumatran Tiger Forum, told Mongabay Indonesia.
Judges at the Mandailing Natal District Court also fined the accused, Aman Faisal Tambunan, 200 million rupiah (almost $12,000).
Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) are the most endangered subspecies of tiger in the world, with an estimated 400-600 individuals remaining across the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Aman stood accused of subjecting a young female tiger to a slow death, court documents showed.
According to the documents, on Sept. 9, Aman discovered a female tiger, around 18 months old, ensnared in one of the many traps he had set in a forest around Hutarimbaru SM village in Kotanopan subdistrict. He then attached a second snare, assaulted the animal and recorded photos and videos of the tigress before leaving her in the forest.
She was found dead in the forest two days later. A postmortem revealed sepsis and organ damage, as well as myiasis in an open wound on the front leg caused by the wire snare.
Aman claimed that the snares he had set were meant to catch wild boars. However, prosecutors proved that Aman had targeted animals with high commercial value.
“As long as the demand for body parts of endangered and protected animals on the black market is still high, hunting and trading will continue to occur,” said Rudianto Saragih Napitu, security lead at Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry.
Adre Wanda Ginting at the North Sumatra provincial prosecutor’s office said the extent of wildlife crime in the province required extensive criminal penalties.
“Hopefully, severe punishment will prevent them repeating their actions, as well as being a deterrent to others against doing anything similar,” Adre said.
Mongabay Indonesia reported that police in two other provinces in March arrested at least 11 people with wildlife crimes, after a tiger was butchered in Riau province, and alleged traffickers were detained handling body parts in the semiautonomous province of Aceh.
The latter sting included the arrest of a man who had previously been sentenced to prison for tiger poaching, and appeared to have returned to the illegal wildlife trade upon his release.
Tigers endemic to the islands of Java (Panthera tigris sondaica) and Bali (Panthera tigris balica) became extinct last century due to forest loss and predation.
This story was first published here in Indonesian on April 15, 2025.
Banner image: A Sumatran tiger killed by a snare in Mandailing Natal district, North Sumatra province. Image by Ayat S Karokaro/Mongabay Indonesia.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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