James Costa
James Costa is an intern at Cosmos. He has completed his Master of Journalism at the University of Melbourne.
Poaching is being blamed for a dramatic loss of number of Sumatran tigers.
Only 11 Sumatran tigers were spotted during Indonesian monitoring activities between 2020 and 2022, potentially indicating “severe” levels of poaching, a scientific study says.
Dr Joe Figel a researcher at the Leuser International Foundation and co-director of Hutan Harimau (Tiger Forests) told Cosmos the low figure, combined with the lack of sighting of cubs and a high proportion of male tigers, has prompted researchers to urge that additional tiger-targeted protection is “urgently needed,”
His report is published in Nature.
He also warns that if the network of rangers who protect the tigers is not fortified, there will be a “much greater risk” that Sumatran tigers won’t been seen outside of protected areas.
Sumatran tigers are one of the rarest tiger subspecies, with as few as 600 individuals left in the wild, a 2017 article in Nature Communications says.
They’re endemic to the Indonesian island of Sumatra and while areas have been established within national parks to protect them, up to 70 per cent of the tigers’ ranges are insufficiently surveyed due to them falling outside of the parks, the report says.
The Nature report monitored the tigers using 52 camera-traps in the Ulu Masen Ecosystem in Sumatra, an area outside of the national protection zones, and found only 11 tigers – 8 of them male, 1 female and 2 of unknown sex.
One sighted tiger was three-legged which the report says was “most likely the result of limb loss from snare entrapment”.
None of the individual tigers seen in 2020 were seen again in 2022.
Figel says the high number of male tiger sightings and the high population turnover was indicative of an unhealthy tiger population in the area.
“Tigers are territorial and male home ranges generally do not overlap.
“In healthy tiger populations, we would be seeing the same males and the same females on camera, year after year, as they patrol their home ranges.
“If a tiger is killed, that vacant territory will then be occupied by a new tiger, either dispersing from another area or expanding into the new area from an adjacent region.”
Figel says research is still ongoing to determine why female tigers may be especially susceptible to poaching.
The report “urgently” recommends the introduction of around 600 trained rangers to the region to protect the tigers from poaching.
Within national parks, which are managed by the Indonesian government, tiger protection rangers have previously been effective in reducing poaching. Previously, in Kerinci-Seblat national park on the island of Sumatra, ranger networks achieved a “41% reduction of snares set,” according to the report.
“Similar gains in Ulu Masen are unachievable without a boosted ranger network,” it says.
Figel highlighted that despite “intense pressures,” the government in Aceh – the region of Indonesia where the Ulu Masen ecosystem is found – has “managed to maintain very high forest cover in the area”. However, the regional government does not have access to the same funding and personnel as the national parks.
Sumatran tigers’ image wins award
29 Oct,2024: The headline on the original article was changed at the researcher’s request as they point out there is no historical data presented in the article that indicates a “dramatic” decline.
