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."