Jul 5, 2007, 7:31 GMT
Jakarta - A camera trap inside Indonesia's Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau province has captured photographs of a Sumatran tiger in the wild that appears to have escaped from a snare by chewing its paw off, the World Wildlife Fund said (WWF) Thursday.
'Four pictures captured by WWFs camera trap in March inside the national park in Central Sumatra show a male tiger missing the lower half of his right front leg,' according to a report received by Deutsche Prese-Agentur dpa.
The same tiger was photographed again in a different location in May 2007 walking in the forest. On both occasions, the tiger appeared to be in good physical condition. WWF staff suspect this was the same tiger caught in a snare trap in November 2006 but scratched or cut its paw off to escape, leaving part of his leg behind.
The Sumatran tiger is the most critically endangered tiger subspecies in the world, with fewer than 400 individuals left in the wild. They are only found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where they have been relentlessly hunted for the black market, and their habitat is rapidly being lost to agricultural and logging operations.
Snares are an added threat to the animal, with some specifically set by poachers to catch tigers, while most are designed to catch other species as bush meat for local villagers or as a means of pest control.
'It's particularly upsetting that this happened inside a national park, where tigers are supposed to enjoy protection,' said Sunarto, Tiger survey and monitoring coordinator of WWF Indonesia, in the report.
'The Sumatran tiger population is at such low levels, we can't afford to lose even one individual to a snare,' he said.
WWF is working with authorities from Tesso Nilo National Park and the Natural Resource Conservation Office in Riau province to increase awareness of tiger conservation, including urging people to stop using snares and educating them on potential risks of such practices.
'The use of snares is not only threatening the remaining tiger population, it also leads to a bigger problem: human-tiger conflict,' Sunarto said.
Tesso Nilo National Park is crucial to the survival of endangered Sumatran tigers and Sumatran elephants although the park faces a serious threat from illegal encroachment for widespread, small-holder palm oil plantation development, which has resulted in the loss of close to 20,000 hectares of natural forest through August 2006.
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