The Jakarta Globe, 3 August 2013,
Villagers in Seluma district, Bengkulu province, have called on forest rangers to take urgent measures to protect them from a tiger that has reportedly been prowling the area since last Sunday.
Anwar T., a community leader in the village of Puguk, said as quoted by Antaranews.com that residents had been living in fear since the animal was first spotted.
He said that after the sighting, in which the tiger remained in the area for eight hours before disappearing into the forest again, eight families living on the periphery of the village had fled their homes for safer areas.
“We held a discussion with all the villagers and we agreed that those living in that particular area should leave in order to avoid having anyone fall victim [to the tiger],” Anwar said.
“The tiger has been prowling around people’s homes and making everyone scared. No one dares go outside their house now,” he added.
Anwar said the villagers had immediately notified the police and the Bengkulu Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) after the first sighting, but there had been no satisfactory response from either side.
“No officials have gone down to the location in question, and meanwhile everyone’s getting more and more anxious,” he said.
He claimed that the police appeared reluctant to go to the location because it was also the site of known illegal logging activities that they had long chosen to overlook.
Jaja Mulyana, a BKSDA official, said his office had already sent three rangers to survey the location but had found no indication that the lone tiger posed an immediate threat to the villagers.
“The information that we received from the team that we sent was that there are indeed tiger tracks in that area, but otherwise the situation appears to be safe,” he said.
The official said the rangers had concluded that the tiger was probably only passing through in search of food, but promised that the BKSDA would continue monitoring the case.
Reports of tigers encroaching into human habitations and attacking people are increasing throughout Sumatra as large swaths of their natural forest habitats are cleared to make way for palm oil and pulp and paper concessions.
In North Sumatra’s Mandailing Natal district, tigers prowling near a village have killed two people and injured one since March. Villagers reported that at least two of the critically endangered animals were lurking in the area.
Last month, a group of four tigers in Aceh’s Gunung Leuser National Park killed and ate a villager and chased his five friends up a tree where they remained for three days while waiting for help.
Police said the attack occurred after the men caught and killed a tiger cub in a snare. Nearby tigers drawn to the scene of the injured cub pounced on the men, killing one of them.
Sumatran tigers are one of the smallest and most endangered of the six extant tiger species in the world, and are believed to number around 400 in the wild. The Gunung Leuser ecosystem is believed to be one of their last major strongholds, with a population of around 100 tigers.
*
za 3 aug 2013 - 9:57