Updates on Tiger Attack

As more details emerged about the chaos during a tiger's attack of three young men at the San Francisco Zoo, family and friends mourned the teenager who was killed.

About 100 people gathered Saturday outside the San Jose home of Carlos Sousa Jr.'s grandmother for a vigil. Many held candles in cups and were silent as Sousa's father stood on the doorstep in front of two enlarged photos of he and his son.

"I would like to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for coming here and honoring my son Carlos. My son Carlos was a very good boy" said Carlos Sousa Sr., choking back tears. "I can see that he had a lot of friends here. I want you all to remember the good things that he did and carry this with you in your hearts for as long as you can."

A 350-pound Siberian tiger killed Sousa Jr. and seriously hurt two of his friends after escaping from its enclosure. Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23, were released from the hospital Saturday. The brothers suffered severe bite and claw wounds.

Police said Sousa Jr.'s neck was slashed while the teen tried to scare away the tiger after it attacked Kulbir Dhaliwal. Sousa, 17, died at the scene just before the zoo's closing time on Christmas Day.

Police radio transcripts revealed a chaotic scene at the San Francisco Zoo as zookeepers scrambled to locate and sedate the animal, and medics refused to enter until they knew they would be safe.

Zoo employees also initially questioned whether early reports of the attack were coming from a mentally unstable person, according to an 18-page log of communications from police dispatchers to officers and emergency responders at the scene.

According to the logs, zoo personnel initially told police that two men reporting the escaped tiger might be mentally disturbed and "making something up," though one was bleeding from the back of the head.

Two minutes later, at 5:10 p.m., zoo employees reported that a tiger was loose and, at 5:13 p.m., the zoo was being evacuated and locked down as fire department responders arrived.
For several minutes, medics refused to enter the zoo until it had been secured. Meanwhile, zookeepers were trying to round up what they initially believed to be multiple tigers.
"Zoo personnel have the tiger in sight and are dealing with it," reads a 5:17 p.m. note on the transcript.

The transcript does not indicate when police or emergency responders entered, but by 5:20 p.m. medics had located one victim with a large puncture hole to his neck. The tiger was still loose.

As medics attended to the victim, an officer spotted the tiger sitting down before it fled and began attacking another victim, according to the logs.

At 5:27 p.m., less than 20 minutes after the initial reports were made, the officers began firing, killing the tiger.

It was unclear whether letting police and medics into the zoo sooner would have altered the outcome of the attacks or subjected emergency responders to greater danger with a tiger on the loose.

It has become increasingly clear that the tiger climbed over the wall of its enclosure, which at just under 12 1/2 high was about 4 feet below the recommended minimum for U.S. zoos.
Zoo officials said the zoo would reopen Thursday.

In the wake of the attack, the Oakland Zoo across San Francisco Bay plans to raise the height of the walls surrounding its tiger enclosure.

The concrete wall and chain-link fence surrounding the two tigers range from 13 1/2 feet to 16 feet, and the zoo is deciding how much higher to raise the pen, said Oakland Zoo executive director Joel Parrott. Its tiger exhibit includes a female Bengal tiger weighing 230 pounds and a female Siberian-Bengal mix weighing 305 pounds.

Finger pointing starts!!!

When Animal Attacks

Crime investigators have moved in to the zoo in America where a visitor was killed by a tiger on Christmas Day. Police are investigating the possibility that the three men involved in the attacked may have provoked the animal, or even helped it escape.

The two other men were seriously hurt and are being treated in hospital.

The animal - a Siberian tiger called Tatiana - was killed by armed police who were called to the incident at San Francisco zoo.

Talk about animalsZoo keepers say they don't know how the creature got out of her enclosure, which is surrounded by a high wall.

The dead man has been named as Carlos Sousa, 17, from San Jose.

The injured men - aged 19 and 23 - are expected to make a full recovery, doctors say.

Save the Orangutans

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched on Monday an action plan to protect the nation's disappearing orangutans.

The president said that if the world community fails to heed his country's action plan, orangutans could face a fate of extinction by the year 2050.

The Strategy and Action Plan for National Conservation of Orangutans, authored by the Indonesian ministry of Forestry Directorate Conservation and Nature Protection, presents the first specific, enforceable agenda to save orangutans from extinction.

The plan commits to maintain orangutan populations above critical thresholds at which their populations may fail to recover. A core target of the plan is to stabilize orangutan populations and habitat from now until 2017.

The idea for the plan sprang form a forum of scientists in 2004that reviewed data on the viability of orangutan populations and habitats.

The review showed that about 6,650 Sumatran orangutans and 55,000 Bornean orangutans remained in the wild, but most local populations were small, isolated and vulnerable.

Deforestation had directly and indirectly led to 3,000 orangutan deaths per year since 1970s.

The Indonesian president chose to launch the Orangutan Action Plan at the United Nations climate change conference now taking place in Bali, a resort island of Indonesia.

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