Five suspected poachers have been arrested for beheading an endangered Sumatran elephant, Indonesian authorities said on Tuesday, trying to crack down on wildlife trafficking in the Southeast Asian country.
Police in Aceh, province in the far west of the Indonesian archipelago, announced that they had apprehended the suspects on Monday after an investigation lasting more than a month.
"We are still looking for a sixth suspect," noted Winardy, spokesman for the Aceh police who, like many Indonesians, has only one name.
The carcass of a 12-year-old male elephant was found headless and tuskless in July in a palm oil plantation.
An autopsy revealed that the animal had been previously poisoned.
Fewer than 500 Sumatran elephants are believed to remain in the wild
One of the suspects killed and beheaded the mammal and his accomplices tried to sell its tusks, police said. The men face up to 10 years in prison if they are sentenced under the law that governs the protection of nature in the archipelago. Deforestation has reduced the natural habitat of Sumatran elephants and is causing increasingly frequent conflicts between animals and humans, especially farmers who want to protect their farms from animal damage.
Elephants are also killed for their ivory tusks, much sought after by traffickers.
Several cases of elephant poisoning have been revealed in recent years in Indonesia, including that in 2019 of a Sumatran elephant found beheaded and without its tusks.
The Aceh Nature Conservation Agency has estimated that fewer than 500 Sumatran elephants survive in the wild.
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