A baby elephant whose trunk was partially amputated by rescuers after being caught in a snare trap in Indonesia died Tuesday despite efforts to heal and rehabilitate her, according to officials. Agus Arianto, the head of Aceh province's conservation agency, said that "we have tried our best, but it can't be helped either," the Associated Press reported.
"Its trunk was getting rotten and no longer functioning," Arianto said.
The 1-year-old elephant, among the dwindling population of about 700 wild Sumatran elephants on Indonesia's Sumatra island, was found Sunday in Alue Meuraksa, a village in the Aceh Jaya district, according to conservation officials. She was very weak and still had a snare stuck in her nearly-severed trunk.
The amputation of half her trunk was an attempted lifesaving measure by wildlife officials at a training center for elephants near Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, the AP reported. A team of vets is working on designating the cause of death via an autopsy, Arianto told reporters.
"Her death was shocking ... because she looked fine after being amputated and actively moving," said Rika Marwati, a veterinarian at the training center. "She suddenly fell ill from stress and infection late Monday and by morning she was reported dead."
The elephant appeared to have been abandoned by her herd because of her worsening condition after being caught in what officials say was a poacher's trap. Elephants are primarily targeted by poachers for their ivory tusks, a type of elongated tooth essential to the animals' survival, according to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that about 20,000 elephants are illegally killed for their tusks every year.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Conservationists say that the coronavirus pandemic has led to increased poaching in Sumatra as villagers turn to hunting for economic reasons.
The number of Sumatran elephants that have died as a result of being snared and poisoning has reached 25 in the past nine years in East Aceh district alone, Arianto said.
In July, an elephant was found without its head at a palm plantation in East Aceh. Police arrested a suspected poacher along with four people accused of buying ivory from the dead animal.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, raised the status of the Sumatran elephant from endangered to critically endangered in its 2012 Red List, mostly because of a significant drop in the population as indicated by the loss of over 69 percent of its potential habitat in the last 25 years — the equivalent of one generation.
Indonesian forestry and environment ministry's data showed the Sumatran elephant population has shrunk from 1,300 in 2014 to 693, down nearly 50 percent in the past seven years.
Sumatran elephants are a subspecies of the Asian elephant, one of two species of the large mammal in the world.
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