A WWF ad was previously released for the exact recent situation. A Sumatran elephant was found helpless with its trunk previously hacked off earlier this week as the authorities suspect that it was previously killed for intruding on residential areas.

The specific male elephant's carcass was found some time around 2:15pm on Wednesday located in the Riau province of Indonesia. The carcass was found about 2.5 miles away from the well known Kelayang district office located in Indragiri Hulu regency, according to The Jakarta Post.

The elephant was regarded as critically endangered and was found with its own face severely mutilated along with its own trunk cut off.

The recent incident report

Suharyono, who is known as the head of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency or BKSDA in Riau has recently said that "the dead elephant ... was separated from its herd in the Tesso Tenggara elephant enclosure," later on explaining that the elephant had lived in the southeast Tesso lephant area of Riau's own Tesso Nilo National Park.

According to Suharyono, he thought that the elephant could have possibly been considered a pest by locals. The elephant apparently entered the residential and also plantation areas which were an essential part of its home range on several occasions resulting to some of the plants found to be damaged not just once, but on multiple occasions.

Between the months of May 2019 and April 2020, a certain BKSDA team has been trying to drive the elephants back into the forest a total of four times. The agency has already been going on regular attempts to barricade a few residential areas ever since last year in an attempt to keep the elephants away but according to Suharyono, some villagers have not been too cooperative.

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The case of the elephants

Suhayono previously said that he had also received and a report that indicated the elephant's head was actually cut open with a certain sharp object and some parts of its own trunk were then scattered around the carcass.

The BKSDA Riau has already launched an investigation regarding the current case with none other than the Kelayang District Police as well as the Special Crime Unit of the Riau Police themselves! They have arrived on the scene and have been conducting an autopsy into the current elephant's death.

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WWF on this matter

WWF estimates that the current population of the Sumatran elephants is around 2,400 and 2,800 and are both protected under Indonesia's own conservation laws but still face threats in specific places. The current threats to the Sumatran elephants include illegal logging, human-wildlife conflict, and also illegal hunting itself where poachers kill for the animal's own tusks.

The status of these elephants has reached 'Critically Endangered' in 2012 after losing half of their population and their status as just 'Endangered'. According to the WWF, this was actually largely due to the habitat loss and also a result of certain human-elephant conflict.