Jakarta Globe 12 Nov 12;
Three elephants were found dead on a plantation in the Riau district of Pelalawan on Monday, allegedly killed as a result of having been poisoned.
The remains were already decaying when discovered not far from Kilometer 89 of Jalan Koridor Baserah, with the rare animals’ deaths judged to have taken place a week earlier.
“Seeing the condition of the carcasses, we think that the three elephants died of poisoning,” a spokesman for the Riau office of the World Wildlife Fund, Syamsidar, told the Indonesian news portal liputan6.com on Monday.
Two of the elephants were adults, while the other was a calf.
Their deaths add to a list of more than 10 Sumatran elephants found dead in Riau province's Tesso Nilo National Park and surrounding areas over the past year, coinciding with an increasing number of conflicts between elephants and humans due to the opening of forests for oil palm plantations in Sumatra.
The WWF has called the situation alarming, as presently only an estimated 200 Sumatran elephants are believed to live in the wild in Tesso Nila and its surrounding environs.
Sumatran elephants have been classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature since January 2011, as the population has declined by at least 80 percent over the past 75 years.
JG
