Sumatran Tiger kills man, Screams lead to victim's Body

A man was discovered dead in western Indonesia following a suspected attack by a Sumatran tiger, authorities revealed on Saturday.

With only a few hundred tigers remaining in the wild on Sumatra's western island, they face threats from poachers targeting their body parts and extensive deforestation shrinking their habitat.

A conservation team set out on Saturday to locate the tiger after a 26-year-old man was found dead at a plantation in Riau province on Sumatra island with injuries indicative of a tiger attack.

"Our team began searching this morning for the tiger. The incident took place within the tiger's habitat," stated Genman Suhefti Hasibuan, head of the local conservation agency.

Local police chief Budi Setiawan reported that two workers heard their colleague's screams while working in an acacia plantation. They discovered tiger footprints and alerted plantation management, who organized a search and found the victim's body with a severed hand and bite marks on his neck.

In February, Sumatran tigers attacked at least four farmers in Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia, in separate incidents.

This species, classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has fewer than 400 individuals left in the wild. WWF warns that accelerating deforestation and poaching may push these tigers to extinction like their Javan and Balinese counterparts.

This incident in Indonesia is the third instance of a tiger killing a human in the past five months. In December, a Siberian tiger in Russia killed a dog and then its owner, and a zoo in Pakistan closed after a tiger fatally attacked a man during routine cleaning.