By: Syamsidar

A devastating news came again in early March as our field team found the body of the female elephant with GPS collar Sat322 in the green-belt of Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper concession. The elephant mobile team who was assigned to monitor this elephant group from the ground found this elephant carcass on March 4th. The scene is around 22 km north-westward from Tesso Nilo Park boundary. The collar was installed on this female elephant in January 2013 for the study of elephant movement, habitat use and home range in Tesso Nilo. According to our monitoring, the GPS collar worked well but sometimes it indeed did not send signals which may due to nature factor such as dense forest cover or etc.  The GPS collar still sent signal until early February but did not send any signals any more. With help of radio receiver, our field team searched for signal from the collar which then brought them to the dead body. The collar was still around the dead elephant body but seemed to have been pulled forcefully.

We reported this case to the conservation authority and urged them to take serious investigation and prosecution for this case. For public pressure, together with the conservation authority, we released a press release with statement from the Head of Nature Conservation Authority on their commitment to further process this case as they have established investigation team. We have made cordination meetings with the authority to follow up this but since many of their resources were taken into haze disaster in Riau during February - March, they responded this case slowly.

The investigation went slow.  Considering high rise number of elephant deaths with slow response from the conservation authority for the investigation, WWF also reported this case to Head of Riau Police, though informally. We expect that police also pay attention on elephant deaths in Riau so that the conservation authority sees that the elephant killing is a serious crime.