We regret the death of an ensnared Sumatran Tiger found and reported by the local residents in the Gelombang District conservation area which forms part of Arara Abadi’s concession in Riau Province, Sumatra, on 18 May 2020. The initial finding indicate that the death of the tiger was caused by illegal poaching.
Arara Abadi immediately reported the incident to the Riau Chamber of Natural Resources (BKSDA) and dispatched an evacuation and medical team. However, the tiger was already dead by the time the team was able to reach the location.
Arara Abadi will continue to work closely with the BKSDA team and provide the required support in the investigation.
Illegal hunting of these key animals harms the balance of the ecosystem. APP Sinar Mas, along with its suppliers including Arara Abadi, strives to contribute to the prevention of such practice around our concession areas.
APP Sinar Mas, among others, has been collaborating with Forum Harimau Kita (FHK), as well as authorities such as Riau BKSDA, Jambi BKSDA, Berbak-Sembilang National Park Office, and the Armed Forces/Police, to carry out snare sweeping operations in the conservation and concession areas in Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra.
We have carried out the joint operation three times in the past year, but aside to that, we do continue to sweep for snares across our operations on a monthly basis.
These operations succeeded in locating and dismantling illegal huts which stored traps and snares for birds and large mammals. The team also secured about 70 snares since carrying out these operations.
We have also installed 177 camera stations to help monitor populations of tigers and elephant. We continued to operate these and been working closely with the local community on the importance of conserving the protected and conflict mitigation, which will enable the community to live alongside wildlife while developing sustainable livelihoods. In addition to that, we also implement preparatory tiger activity survey to ensure that our operational activities such as planting and harvesting does not intervene with their roaming period in a particular area. The data collected from the monitoring activities indicated that currently there are 46 tigers are using APP’s concession area as part of their habitat range.
We do acknowledge that illegal logging and poaching remains an issue that needs to be continuously addressed together with other key actors in the landscape. Through our FCP commitment, we plan to continuously review and upgrade our efforts to address this challenge.