When Edi Susilo arrived at the scene in Pasaman district on the afternoon of May 21, he found something no one wanted to see: an 11-month-old female Sumatran tiger cub in a wild boar snare, wrapped in about five loops around her neck, trunk, and right foreleg. "She struggled for a while and began groaning back and forth," Susilo, the BKSDA lead in Pasaman district, later recalled. The conservation team sedated her and evacuated her to a wildlife facility, but the rescue sparked something larger—a crackdown on the snares that have become a quiet catastrophe for Sumatra's most iconic species.
Indonesia's state conservation agency, the BKSDA, issued a letter in late May warning the public that any protected species caught in a snare would now lead to criminal liability under a 2024 amendment to the country's 1990 conservation law. The letter was blunt: farmers who set snares to trap wild boar—regarded as pests to crops—needed to remove them immediately. "For those already installed, take them down straight away because they pose risks to protected tigers and sun bears and others," said Ade Putra of the BKSDA.
The crackdown came after a cluster of disturbing rescues. On June 19, a female sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) was reported by community members in Panti, Pasaman district, sedated and evacuated for treatment by a joint team from the BKSDA, the Centre for Orangutan Protection, and Pasaman district veterinarians. In neighboring Jambi province, rescuers freed a young elephant calf (Elephas maximus sumatranus) found caught in a snare for as long as two weeks on land operated by PT Lestari Asri Jaya, a subsidiary of France's Michelin. All three animals survived—but not all are so lucky.
Researchers from Indonesia and the Memphis Zoological Society documented the snare crisis in a 2023 study focusing on Aceh and North Sumatra, two provinces containing much of Sumatra's remaining tiger habitat. From 2008 to 2023, they confirmed 28 incidents of tigers caught in snares; nine of those tigers died, while eight more suffered injuries requiring permanent captivity. The West Sumatra BKSDA has recorded four tigers caught in snares in just the last four years alone, two of which died from their injuries. Rizaldi, a conservation scientist at Andalas University in Padang, said the problem is only worsening: "The situation has become dangerous because people are setting these snares."
The stakes are enormous. Sumatran tigers with disabling injuries cannot hunt their usual prey and, if released, may turn to livestock near human settlements—increasing the risk of deadly conflict with people. But the recent rescues, and the new legal teeth behind the snare ban, suggest a turning point. The question now is whether enforcement can reach the remote forests and farming communities where these silent traps continue to threaten Sumatra's wildlife.