March 19, 2004 Friday 5:18 AM Eastern Time

Six Indonesians arrested for hunting, buying endangered tigers

JAKARTA, March 19 -- Indonesian police have announced the arrest of six men suspected of trading in endangered Sumatran tigers just days after environmentalists urged action to prevent the animal's extinction.

Three alleged buyers of dead tigers were arrested in Jambi city on Sumatra island on February 15 followed three days later by two suspected hunters and a middleman, a senior police officer told the Detikcom online news service.

The alleged hunters are residents of Bukit Tiga Puluh National Park in the Indragiri Hulu district of Riau province, said the police officer.

"It is being investigated," Muhtadin, an official with the government's forestry protection branch in Jakarta, told AFP.

It was unclear why the arrests were not made public earlier.

A joint report by WWF and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released on Tuesday urged the Indonesian government to take urgent action to stop poaching and the "rampant" destruction of the tigers' natural habitat.

About 50 Sumatran tigers were killed every year by poachers between 1998 and 2002 according to the report, which said only an estimated 400-500 remain in the wild in Sumatra.