Sumatran tiger tries to beat the extinction odds

Sumatran tiger tries to beat the extinction odds

By Dini S. Djalal

SUMBER JAYA, Lampung (JP): He lay there quietly, hiding his
face behind a stray log. Through the handycam's viewfinder, I
watched him watch me with piercing green eyes. Then, without
warning, he growled. And jumped. As did I, who prayed never
to hear a roar so frighteningly loud again.

It's all on film, the terror this Sumatran tiger can trigger
even behind steel bars. Indonesian folklore is full of stories
of how tigers ruled the jungles of Sumatra, Java and Bali. After
only one growl, the reasons are frigtheningly clear.

But the king of Sumatra's jungles now finds his kingdom
shrinking. The home of the tiger just described is not hectares
of Sumatran wilderness, but a four-by-four cage at Taman Safari
wildlife park in Cisarua, West Java.

Pacing back and forth in a restricted, superficial space may
pale to racing in the wild, but life at the zoo is longer. A
tiger can live for 20 years in a park's controlled habitat but
can now last only 10 years in real forests. Once the most feared
predator on land, now it's the tiger that fears for its survival.
Once a danger to man and beast alike, the Sumatran tiger is now
the one who is endangered.

The Sumatran Tiger Foundation, a joint venture between the
World Wide Fund for Nature and Indonesia's Ministry of Forestry,
is working to save the Sumatran tiger by setting up study and
rescue teams to reduce odds of the animal attacking people and
thus risk getting hunted. Foundation director Ron Tilson
estimates there are only 100 tigers left living outside of zoos
and national parks, and only 500 tigers left in
total, down from 5,000 20 years ago.

Tilson adds that most people don't realize the tigers'
predicament. "We're trying to educate people that the Sumatran
tiger is really an endangered species, and that it's a symbol of
wilderness that we must try to keep," he said.

How did this once mighty species dwindle so drastically in
number in such a short time?

It's the same old story of animal extinctions: environmental
degradation. The Sumatran tiger simply has a harder time finding
food to eat, and that's because its habitat is now so poor and
restricted it can't sustain healthy populations of wild deer and
pig, the tigers' usual prey.

"The tigers are living in marginal habitat, habitat where prey
species they normally eat have probably been lost due to
trapping, or that the environment has just become so degraded
that the prey species no longer live there," said Ron Tilson.

Hasan Rashid, head of Muara Jaya village in Lampung, South
Sumatra, confirms that not a single pig can be spotted during
tiger season. He also admits to hearing of the prey being hunted,
either for commercial or recreational reasons, but claims the
animal population is growing rapidly rather than depleting.

He denies tigers are having their forests taken away, arguing
rather that, with the current reforestation project by
government-run PT Inhutani, their habitat is expanding.

Bigger space or not, the tigers remain in their home base even
after their prey have left, said Ron Tilson. "Tigers stalk out a
certain territory and stay there. They don't leave that space.
Eventually what happens is that they get hungry enough to take
people as prey."

Which is exactly what they're doing. This is one endangered
species that's not going away quietly. In June, the tranquil
district of Sumber Jaya, Lampung, South Sumatra, was roused by
unprecedented tiger attacks. In only one month, three people were
killed and eaten, and another three mauled.

The attacks were gruesome, and in most cases, unprovoked.
Ujang, a 23-year-old who surveys the jungle for US$2 a day, was
attacked by three angry tigers. He doesn't bear think about where
he would be today if he hadn't been on his motorbike when one
tiger pawed his foot.

Gustiah, a 34-year-old cook from Fajarbulan village, was
killed while sleeping in her hut. Inhutani tree planter Sutedjo
recounted that the other workers and Gustiah's 14-year-old son,
who slept in the same room, "heard the sound of wood creaking but
no other noise until 10 minutes later when the son began
screaming. They woke only to find blood and paw prints".

When they eventually located her body the next morning 150
meters behind the house, her thighs and neck had been gnawed
away.

The tiger was later captured, or at least a tiger was
captured, by a rescue team from the Safari Park and the Forest
Protection and Nature Conservation office in Lampung. They named
the three year-old tiger -- a mere baby in the tiger world --
Udung, after one of its captors. The rescue team said it took 24
hours to sedate Udung once in captivity.

Another tiger, an older female, gnawed her away out of the
trap. A Safari Park director, Jansen Manansang, admits that its
rescue facilities need improvement, but says the rescue was
either now or never.

Yet according to Sumiati, a traditional psychic healer from
Bungin village hired to help trap the tiger, it's the ones that
got away that are more dangerous.

"The small one is nothing, it's the other two tigers that are
really vicious," she said. Sumiati claims that the attacks
occurred because the victims failed to "greet" the forest.

"You can't go into the forest just like that. You have to be
patient, you have to meet with the forest guardians. Now it's
better that nobody goes back into the forest," she said.

That's a tall order. In a perverse twist, the victims are the
same ones trying to help the tigers' survival. All the victims
were working for government-run reforestation company Inhutani,
which is trying to turn these former forest concessions and
coffee farms into a national park.

More than 53 tree planters are working around the clock
planting seedlings in 3,800 hectares in order to catch up to the
planned completion in 2000 of PLTA Way Besai, a power station
operated by PT Indah Karya that will supposedly supply
electricity to all of Sumatra.

Inhutani's job is to transform the treeless hilltops into a
water catchment area for the dam, which sits in the middle of the
proposed national park.

Locals say it's reforestation that's causing the tiger
attacks.

"There used to be three villages up there (where the attacks
occurred), but they were moved down years ago to make way for
reforestation," said Rashid. "Now that whole area is jungle
again, so the tigers are closer."

Rashid echoed Ujang's sentiment that the other tigers should
be captured. "We don't feel any safer now that one tiger is
caught, because people here have seen the other tigers. Every
tiger caught will make us feel better."

But every tiger caught threatens the survival of the species,
which maintains the forest ecosystem by eating other species
lower down the food chain. Conservationists say that relocating
tigers from the wild into a national park does not help as tigers
already living there will behave territorially and refuse to
share their prey with the new tigers. And tigers in a zoo -- and
there are already 20 Sumatran tigers at the Safari Park -- are
hardly symbols of wilderness.

Environmentalists point out many possibilities that could
improve the situation, but stress the top priority is to protect
the environment. This involves not only setting up tree
plantations -- often the case with reforestation -- but restoring
the forest as close to its original state, where both tigers and
prey ran wild.

"We can't just keep catching the tigers, that doesn't protect
them," said Jansen Manansang. "If we take care of the forests,
the forest ecosystem will protect them and everybody else."