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joint team of officers from the North Sumatra Police and a forest rangers'€™ quick response unit from the Mount Leuser National Park (TNGL) are believed to have smashed a syndicate trading in Sumatran tiger skins, following the arrest of four suspects during a transaction in a hotel in Binjai, North Sumatra.

The team apprehended the suspects on Thursday night and confiscated a tiger skin. '€œThe syndicate had been operating for a long time. Their market reached as far as China,'€ North Sumatra Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) protection, conservation and mapping section head Joko Iswanto said.

Besides selling the skins overseas, Joko said the suspects, who lived near the park, admitted to selling the skins to Indonesian buyers.

He said the suspects, identified as Gunawan Kacaribu, 24, Hendrawan Tarigan, 20, M. Syaid Ali R. Gusnuh, 39, and Suroyo, 30, were being detained at the North Sumatra Police headquarters in Medan.

Before selling the results of their hunting expeditions in the park to buyers in Java or overseas, Joko said, all the animal parts were collected together by the syndicate in Medan.

'€œThe price for a Sumatran tiger skin varies depending on the quality, but they can fetch tens of millions of rupiah,'€ Joko said, adding that the one which was confiscated from the suspects was worth Rp 20 million (US$1,428).

He said the seized skin was believed to be from a young adult tiger aged between 6 and 9 years old.

Joko said the suspects could be charged under Law No. 21/1990 on biodiversity conservation and the ecosystem, which carried a punishment of five years in prison and a fine of Rp 100 million.

Gunawan allegedly told police that there were still many other hunters operating in the national park.

TNGL head Andi Basrul said the park management would cooperate with law enforcers in their ongoing efforts to catch individual and syndicate poachers in the park located in North Sumatra and Aceh provinces. '€œThere is no compromise with those hunting animals in the TNGL. They will be prosecuted,'€ Andi said.

Last week, the joint team arrested a forest ranger together with a local resident at a hotel in Kutacane, Aceh, and seized evidence including a tiger skin and 2 kilograms of tiger bones.

The arrest of the ranger fueled suspicions that rangers from the forestry agency in Blangkejeren, Gayo Lues regency, Aceh, have been involved in a tiger-poaching syndicate around the TNGL.

Previously in August, police arrested four men for allegedly killing a Sumatran tiger and trying to sell its body parts.

Acting on a tip-off, a group of police officers posing as potential buyers arrested the men as they allegedly attempted to sell the tiger'€™s skin, bones and teeth.

Poachers frequently hunt tigers, which are native to the vast and diverse habitat of Sumatra island, as their body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicines and are highly valued.

There are fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, according to environmental group WWF.

Besides poaching, the TNGL also faces the scourge of illegal logging. Based on forestry ministry data from 1997, the TNGL once spanned 1,095,592 hectares, but in 2014, the area had declined to only 800,000 hectares as a result of logging.