Tiger taken from Indonesia death zoo dies
A tiger that was rescued from Indonesia's "zoo of death" and inspired global concern for the troubled park has died.
Melani, a rare Sumatran tigress, was emaciated from a lifetime of illness and malnutrition when she was removed from Surabaya Zoo last year.
The zoo in eastern Java has gained a grim reputation after hundreds of animal deaths in recent years.
Melani was not expected to live, and experts recommended her euthanasia.
But she fought on, before succumbing to the many side-effects of neglect last month, aged 16.
Melani's story helped draw the world's attention to Surabaya Zoo and rallied support for Australian charity Cee4life, which has been raising funds for improvements there.
The group's director Sybelle Foxcroft announced Melani's death on Facebook on Sunday.
"The day before she died she was her happy and beautiful self," she wrote.
"She closed her eyes that last night with one of her keepers, she was content and calm."
One of those experts who had been caring for the "miracle tiger" at a wildlife park near Jakarta, Tony Sumampau, said the zoo had fed her so much meat tainted with the illegal preservative formalin, her digestive system was ruined.
Mr Sumampau is bitterly disappointed by the lack of progress at Surabaya Zoo, which promised to shape up last year.
"Yes, there's been some repairs, but mainly for visitors ... not for the welfare of the animals," he said.
The zoo's problems are blamed on a long-running power struggle within the management and under-funding.
The death toll includes an African lion found hanged in its cage by cables, and a giraffe that died with a massive lump of plastic in its stomach from eating so much garbage.
There are fewer than 400 endangered Sumatran tigers left in the wild, where they are threatened by poachers selling to the medicine trade, and loss of habitat to the paper and palm oil industries.
