Source : The Star, Malaysia, 08 Feb '05
By : Michele Lian
  

	There are only 500 tigers left in Malaysia, and they are mostly found in Kelantan, Terengganu, Perak and Pahang.

WE ARE losing our tigers. The Malaysian tiger population stood at 2,990 in the 1950s. Today, it has been whittled down to 500.

This decline, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia says, is the result of commercial poaching, loss of habitat and conflicts between tigers and the people who live near them.

While poaching cannot be stopped completely, WWF’s latest Living Together in Harmony tiger conservation project – initiated courtesy of a RM630,000 cash injection from HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad and with the help of the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) – aims to reverse the bad reputation tigers have among villagers who live near tiger-inhabited forests.

WWF national programme director Dr Dionysius Sharma explained: “Some practices are not compatible with tiger ecology. For example, when people allow their cattle to come too close to the edge of the forest, that is careless cattle management because the animals become easy prey to the tigers and for the tigers, preying on cattle can become habitual.

“In forests that are properly managed, there should be enough natural prey for the tigers. It is really the people and their practices that we need to manage. They need to know that tigers need not feed on their cattle, so prescribing them good cattle husbandry methods will be the first things we want to do,” he said after the project's launch in Kuala Lumpur last month.

The project will be modelled after the organisation's previous tiger conservation effort at the Felda Jerangau Barat scheme in central Terengganu, which ran for four years.

Dr Dionysius Sharma: ‘It is really the people and their practices that we need to manage.’

“In Jerangau, we ran workshops, and rebuilt and relocated paddocks so that they were not too close to the forest. After about 22 months of monitoring, only five cattle were killed by tigers instead of 50 to 80, which could easily cost farmers between RM50,000 and RM80,000 in losses each year.

“This was a significant reduction in cattle loss, and it also meant that the people no longer saw the tigers as threats to be shot at, poisoned in retaliation or captured to be put in zoos.”

Sharma said monitoring also showed that the wildlife population in the jungle remained constant throughout the 22 months – which meant that there was enough natural prey for the tigers to feed on.

Tigers, once widespread in the peninsula, are now mostly found in the states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Perak and Pahang. The Living Together in Harmony project will see Sharma and his team of seven field officers, biologists and researchers expanding their work to the Jeli district in Kelantan.

“If we look at the history of the conflict between tigers and people, it is in Kelantan, particularly the Jeli district, where it has been quite rampant. So we thought it best to expand our work there.”

Tiger conservation in Malaysia is not new, said Sharma, having been carried out by Perhilitan. “But over the years, the tigers proved to be too much of a problem because human lives were being lost or endangered by them, so they were caught and kept in captivity. Our efforts, in comparison, are fairly new and are about five years old.”

His staff will run community programmes to educate villagers and farmers, hold awareness-building workshops and perform the necessary monitoring and research.

	Tigers have been hunted down for their body parts. These pelts were seized from a house in Johor Baru two years ago.

They will also rope in residents in Jeli to act as their eyes and ears to nab poachers. Perhilitan will step in when enforcement is required.

Despite the mammoth task ahead, Sharma admitted that there are limits to what the organisation can do because of finite resources.

“We are not involved in poultry practices, and we don’t have jurisdiction over tiger trappings. Perhilitan takes care of enforcement and deals with poachers.

“We have ideas of what needs to be done, but we don’t have the resources, so the bank has come in to make this a reality. It has provided us with the means to hire people to go out there and do the work.”

The Malaysian chapter of the international organisation relies on funding from WWF Netherlands, which had already pumped ?250,000 (RM1,242,828) into its previous tiger conservation efforts, but said Sharma, the cost of running conservation projects are often grossly underestimated.

A five year conservation project will require a minimum of RM200,000 a year, with equipment taking up the bulk of the costs. The infra-red cameras used to monitor the tigers in the jungle round-the-clock cost about RM2,000 each, and at least 50 are needed.

That is about RM100,000 for the cameras alone. Some of the cameras are damaged by elephants and others, stolen, and so need to be replaced.

The project is unlikely to solve all our wildlife woes, but for WWF executive director Datuk Dr Mikaail Kavanagh, it is a start. “I think we can do a great deal in three years in terms of changing attitudes and getting people to see our point of view. Just showing that you care enough to go and work with them has an immediate change.”