Baby elephant is forced to have her trunk amputated after being snared by cruel poachers

A baby elephant was forced to have her trunk amputated after being snared by cruel poachers and left behind by her herd in Indonesia.

The elephant, in Indonesia's Sumatra island, was caught in a trap set by poachers who prey on the endangered species, according to authorities.   

The one-year-old is among the last of the island's 700 wild Sumatran elephants.

Conservation agency workers found her very weak with a snare embedded in her almost-severed trunk.

She was rescued on Sunday in Alue Meuraksa, a village in the Aceh Jaya district which is forested, according to Agus Arianto, who is the head of Aceh province's conservation agency. 

To save the life of the baby elephant, wildlife officials today had to amputate half of her trunk at the Elephant Training Centre in Aceh Besar, Indonesia.

Sumatran elephants were raised from endangered to critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on its 2012 Red List.

Data from the Indonesian forestry and environment ministry has revealed that the population of the Sumatran elephant has shrunk from 1,300 in 2014 to 693, a decrease of nearly 50 per cent in the last seven years.