Indonesia: elephant calf dies after losing half of its trunk in a hunter’s trap

The elephant calf that was rescued after being caught in a trap set by hunters died this last Tuesday on the island of Sumatra (Indonesia). The pachyderm had to have half of its trunk cut off to rescue it.

The one-year-old female was one of the last 700 wild elephants to inhabit the area. “We did the best we could, but he couldn’t be helped“, he pointed And Arianto, head of the province’s conservation agency Aceh. “His trunk was decomposing and no longer working”.

She was found very weak last Sunday caught in a trap in Region Meuraksa, a wooded village in the district Aceh Jaya, according to conservation officials.

Arianto noted that wildlife officials tried to amputate half of the trunk on Monday at an elephant training center near Banda Aceh, the capital of the province. He was in care, but could not survive.

“His death was shocking … because he seemed to be well and active after the amputation”said Rika Marwati, a veterinarian at the center.

“Suddenly, on Monday afternoon, she fell ill from stress and infection, and by the morning of the next day she was reported dead”, he indicated.

Conservationists say the COVID-19 poaching has increased in Sumatra because the villagers turn to it for economic reasons.

According to the AP news agency, the number of elephants in Sumatra who have died as a result of poaching and poisoning has reached 25 in recent years in the district of Aceh Oriental.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) raised the status of the Sumatran elephant from threatened to severely threatened on its Red List, largely due to a sharp decline in population as indicated by the loss of 69% of its possible habitat over the past 25 years, the equivalent to one generation.

Sumatran elephants are a subspecies of the Asian elephant, one of the two main species of pachyderm in the world.