JAKARTA, June 29 (Xinhua) -- A critically endangered Sumatran tiger was found dead at a plantation in Indonesia's province of Aceh, a local official confirmed on Monday.
Agus Arianto, head of Aceh's Natural Resources Conservation Agency, said that a team has been sent to the scene in Trumon subdistrict of South Aceh district to perform a necropsy to find the cause of the tiger's death.
Two weeks ago, the local police arrested four suspects for allegedly trading animals, including Sumatran tigers and sun bears, seizing organ parts of the animals as evidence.
The Sumatran tiger, the only surviving species of the Sunda Islands tigers once including the now-extinct Bali tiger and Javanese tiger, has been listed as a critically endangered species in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List since 2008.
An estimate from the Environment and Forestry Ministry puts the wild Sumatran tiger population at no more than 600 as of December 2018 due to a loss of habitat and poaching. Enditem
