Police arrests smugglers of rare Sumatran tiger body parts
By DPA, IANSMonday, July 19, 2010
JAKARTA - Police in eastern Sumatran foiled an attempt to smuggle endangered Sumatran tiger body parts out of Riau province and arrested two men, media reports said Monday.
Riau police chief detective Sapta Maulana Marpaung said the men were arrested Sunday transporting three cartons of bones and skins from six tigers, the state-run Antara news agency reported.
Marpaung said the two confessed to illegal smuggling of tiger parts and skins up to four times in a week, but he did not say how long the men had been involved in the trade.
One tiger can bring the poachers up to 30 million rupiah ($3,300), the report said.
Prisunu Danisworo, chief of the provincial forestry ministry’s biodiversity conservation, said his office had joined with police in hunting down poachers and smugglers.
“The tiger body parts trade is rife in Sumatra. This is because high demand for tiger bones used for traditional medicine. The skin used for fashion,” Danisworo said.
The World Wide Fund for Nature estimates the number of Sumatran tigers left in the wild at about 400.
