In The News

Lifetime tiger hunter snared

JAKARTA - INDONESIAN conservationists said on Friday they had caught red-handed a 92-year-old man who had admitted to killing dozens of critically endangered Sumatran tigers over a lifetime of hunting.

'We caught him on Thursday while he was sailing a traditional wooden boat in a river in Kuala Cinaku with evidence of skin, skull and 8.3kg of bones from a tiger,' Iwin Kasiwan, from the natural conservation agency in Riau province, Sumatra, told AFP.

The man, named Wiryo, told conservationists that he started hunting tigers for a living when he was 17 on Java island. He moved to Sumatra in 1960 as the population of Javan tiger decreased.

'According to him, he has killed more than 50 Sumatran tigers in Riau province alone,' Mr Kasiwan said, adding it could see the 92-year-old jailed for up to five years.

Wiryo explained that he managed to sell the tiger parts in Singapore.

There are fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild and their increasing contact with people is a result of habitat loss due to poaching and deforestation, according to conservationists. -- AFP.


Reflection :

For me, killing dozens of endangered Sumatran tigers for a living is the most unspeakable doing of a human. I mean he can be a painter, a farmer, a driver of a delivery truck or any jobs out there. This guy is just too stupid to rely on tigers' parts for a living. He deserves to be in jail for 5 years. I hope he learns his lesson and when he is released from jail, he would find another job.

By the way, people has to stop cutting trees for the sake of the animals' population and to make it less for them to be spotted by humans so easily. I hope that the Singapore Prime Minister will use all of his power to ban selling tigers' parts.

I hope the Sumatran tigers and the Javan tigers will not extinct and will soon recover on their population. I am looking forward to any animals that will always exist in the future.