MELAKA: The Fire and Rescue Services Department together with the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) took more than five hours to catch a female tapir that got lost and was found wandering around the parking area of a hotel in Bandar Hilir here today.
Melaka Tengah Fire and Rescue station operations chief Mohd Sofian Hassan said a team of eight men was deployed to the scene when they received a call at 9.04am. The tapir was said to be on the fifth floor of the premise.
Sofian said the tapir, weighing around 250kg, was still unable to find its way out of the premise when the team arrived at the scene.
"We contacted Perhilitan and asked for their assistance for an operation to capture the tapir.
"Since the animal was found to be slightly aggressive, we requested, for everyone's safety and wellbeing, that it would be better for the hotel management to seal off the parking area and not allow anyone to park there while efforts were being made to capture the animal.
"The Perhilitan team fired three tranquilizer darts before the animal fell to the ground and was sedated. During that process, a car belonging to one of the hotel guests was slightly damaged from being hit by the animal," he said.
Meanwhile, state Perhilitan director Mohd Firdaus Mahmood said its team was on standby to capture the animal at any time and place after receiving a couple of complaints about the animal from members of the public.
"Actually, we were tracking the animal from two weeks ago after receiving a few complaints, but somehow we could not pinpoint the animal's exact location until today.
"We suspect that the animal got lost after coming out from the jungle to forage for food where it ended up wandering into the hotel grounds all the way up to the fifth floor by using the staircase on the side of the hotel building," he said.
Firdaus said cases of tapir sightings in Melaka were rare and isolated, receiving a report or complaint once every four to five years.
"For the time being, the animal will be placed at Melaka Zoo before being sent to the National Wildlife Sanctuary Centre in Sungkai, Perak," he said.
