Wildlife officials suspect foul play in the deaths of seven Sumatran elephants on the outskirts of Tesso Nilo National Park. Officials stumbled on the corpses of one female elephant, five young males, and one male calf in mid-February. Although the males had their tusks hacked off, the officials suspect the elephant were poisoned in revenge for disturbing illegal palm oil plantations inside the park.
“There is an indication that they were poisoned,” Muhammad Zanir, head of the local wildlife agency, told the AFP. “Some people may consider the elephants a threat to their palm oil plantations and poison them.”
Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus) are listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List, with populations decimated by the massive deforestation that has transformed the Indonesian island over the last couple decades. In recent years, Sumatran elephants are also falling victim to mass-poisonings, allegedly undertaken by some palm…