Nurdin Hasan Jakarta Globe 15 Apr 14;
Banda Aceh. Police in Aceh have arrested six people for allegedly killing three Sumatran elephants this year for their tusks, and are still searching for seven other suspects.
The six now in custody were all residents of Teupin Panah village in West Aceh district and were arrested on Saturday for the killing of a male elephant earlier this month, according to Sr. Comr. Gustav Leo, a spokesman for the Aceh Police.
“Upon further questioning of the six suspects, they admitted they had killed three elephants over the past three months for their tusks,” he told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.
The two other elephants were killed in Blangpidie in Southwest Aceh district and in Seumantok village in West Aceh, he added.
Gustav said the suspects claimed to have killed the elephants by setting up booby traps in which a tripwire tied between trees launched a sharpened wooden stake at the animals, impaling them in the head.
“Once the elephants were dead, they cut off the tusks and sold them to a fence in Kuta Fajar in South Aceh district,” he said, adding that police were still hunting down the others involved in the crime.
Police have seized parts of the traps as evidence.
Gustav said the alleged perpetrators sold the tusks from each elephant killed for Rp 1 million ($87).
The villagers arrested in the case face charges under the 1990 Natural Resources Conservation Law that could see them sentenced to up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
The Sumatran elephant, a critically endangered species, faces mounting threats to its survival from the decimation of Sumatra’s forests to make way for farmland.
Aceh’s forests have largely been left intact as a result of the province’s three-decade isolation during an armed insurgency from which it emerged in 2005, but a new zoning plan being pushed by Governor Zaini Abdullah threatens to clear large swaths of forests that are home to elephants, orangutans, tigers and other endangered species.
In Riau province to the south, elephants are routinely killed, often by farmers and plantation companies after encroaching onto farmland in search of food.
In February, the World Wide Fund for Nature reported that the bodies of seven elephants, likely killed by humans, had been found in Riau’s Tesso Nilo National Park, an ostensibly protected area.
The elephants — a male, a female and five calves — were believed to have died in November of last year, probably after being poisoned, a WWF official said.
The findings brought the total number of elephant deaths in Riau in the 10 months to February to 10, nine of which were believed to have been caused by poisoning.
Aceh Police Arrest More Suspected Elephant Poachers
Nurdin Hasan Jakarta Globe 16 Apr 14;
In this handout photo taken on August 8, 2013 and released by World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia on August 22, 2013, female elephant Ria, right, walks next to her newborn in Tesso Nelo National Park, Riau Province, Sumatra. (AFP Photo/World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia)
Banda Aceh. Police in Aceh have arrested another six people for allegedly killing a Sumatran elephant for its tusks, bringing to 12 the number of suspected poachers nabbed in the case.
Adj. Sr. Comr. Faisal Rivai, the police chief in West Aceh district, said on Wednesday that the latest suspects were arrested on Tuesday in separate locations based on information from the six already in custody since Saturday.
He said the suspects, accused of killing a male elephant earlier this month, claimed they were not after the tusks initially.
“They confessed to killing the elephant because a herd of elephants had been destroying their crops,” Faisal told the Jakarta Globe.
He said it was only after the elephant was killed that they hacked off its tusks and sold it to a fence in Southwest Aceh district. Faisal said police had identified the suspected fence and were now looking for him.
Police on Tuesday announced that they had arrested six residents of Teupin Panah village in West Aceh for their alleged roles in killing the male elephant and two others, in Blangpidie in Southwest Aceh district and in Seumantok village in West Aceh.
They are accused of setting up booby traps to kill the endangered animals, then selling their tusks to the fence in Southwest Aceh.
One of those arrested on Tuesday, Hamdani, told reporters at the West Aceh Police headquarters that the ivory was not their main motivation for killing the elephant.
“Lots of residents have lost their crops to the herd of elephants. We’ve reported it many times to the authorities, but there’s never been any attempt to shoo away the elephants,” he said.
Police have charged all 12 suspects under the 1990 Natural Resources Conservation Law that could see them sentenced to up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
Genman Suhefti Hasibuan, the head of the Aceh Natural Resources Conservation Agency, or BKSDA, welcomed the arrest of the suspected poachers but warned of the potential for even more human-elephant conflicts in the province as the animals’ habitat was cleared for farmland.
“There needs to be a concerted effort from all sides — from the local authorities, the BKSDA and the residents — to resolve these human-elephant conflicts,” he told the Globe. “If we don’t do that, the conflicts will keep happening.”
Genman said his agency had recorded 20 incidents of elephants encroaching onto farms or villages in Aceh in the past three months, multiple times in some places.
