Two Sumatran tigers escaped a Borneo zoo on Friday after a landslide broke their enclosures open. The ordeal resulted in a horrific outcome.
Singkawang’s Sinka Zoo, located in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan Province, received heavy downpour last week, resulting in a horrific a landslide. Unfortunately, the slide opened up a tunnel for the zoo’s Sumatran tigers to escape.
One of the critically endangered species has been captured alive, however, the other was shot dead.
Sumatran tigers, as listed by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, are critically endangered animals. It’s believed that less than 400 remain in the wild, so to have two escape captivity is pretty disastrous. What happened after their escape is sadly no good either.
The two large cats, both female and around 18-months old, made their escape on Friday. A 47-year-old zookeeper was found after the ordeal with bite wounds and scratches, dead. Many zoo animals were also killed, including a cassowary, a monkey, and an ostrich.
A critically endangered Sumatran tiger was shot dead while another is still on the loose after they escaped from Sinaka Zoo in Singkawang, West Kalimantan.
Days of torrential rain caused a landslide and opened a tunnel allowing their exit. A zookeeper has also been found dead. pic.twitter.com/1n4Ut1lJwy
— BFM News (@NewsBFM) February 7, 2021
Police informed locals to stay indoors while a mass-scale hunt for the tigers commenced. Sadtata Noor Adirahmanta, head of the local conservation agency, initially hoped to retrieve the tigers without killing either, but expressed to the AFP that “our priority is humans’ safety”. One tiger managed to be captured alive with a tranquilliser dart, but the other was killed.
“We tried with a tranquillizer gun first, but it didn’t work, so we were forced to shoot the tiger because it was behaving very aggressively,” Adirahmanta explained.
Dreadful but fortunately the second tiger was tranquilised and recovered…
— prigby (@PaulPrigby) February 7, 2021
Medical professionals are currently checking on the living Sumatran tiger.
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