Force for the Forest

Keeping the last lowland SE Asian rainforest safe.

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The Indonesian head of protection and conservation, Darori, has announced a new plan whereby wealthy people can keep a pet tiger if they post a $100,000 bond and keep it in a cage at least 10 x 6 metres.

“We hope that this program will eradicate poaching as a means of
fulfilling a high demand by rich people in Indonesia … who want to
have tigers as pets or dead tigers for their home decoration,” he said.

The animals will remain the property of the State and offspring re-introduced into the wild.

Although I am a little suspicious of this plan, I don’t want to throw it out instantly because it is new and I haven’t seen all the reasoning behind it.  Maybe it will serve to get the wealthy consumers of tiger products to divert their attention from wild animals.  But where will they get the pets from in the first place?

Most of the 300 remaining wild Sumatran Tigers are in Leuser Ecosystem, perhaps 250 of them.  It is a large area, over 250,000 sq km, and it is well protected by BPKEL.  The local headmen are behind the reserve and the local people report any poaching to BPKEL who actively prosecute poachers, using the police to apprehend them.  The courts now give out sentences which are successfully deterring poaching and the decline in wild numbers has stopped.  The only problem is funding, which FFTF is attempting to rectify, in that BPKEL do not have enough money to ensure every case goes to court.  They need assistance, either financial or from other agencies who will ensure all prosecutions go ahead – not just poaching but to all the threats to the forest.

There is enough room in Leuser for the expanding population of tigers, and they breed at 3 per tigress per year, BUT what happens then?  Young tigers will leave mum and go off looking for an area of their own.  They will either have to kick an old tiger out of it’s range or claim an untouched one.

So inevitably the time will come when tigers start to move out of the reserve.

What do we do then?  The locals will stop being supportive of the reserve if tigers come out and eat their animals and friends – which they will.

We cannot catch the tigers and move them to an unpopulated part of the reserve for ever – we will run out of unpopulated parts.

Shooting them is not a solution, for it will open the floodgates and we will lose all the tigers.

Do they expect to use these tigers as pets?  Fully adult tigers with a suspicion of people?  I cannot see anybody wanting to keep a tiger as a pet that has not been raised by hand from a cub.

We will need OTHER areas of forest, without tigers but healthy populations of prey animals, to which to move the tigers.  These will need to be reserves where there is strong enforcement.  That isn’t available at the moment, so the challenge to the Indonesian Government, and indeed all governments with tigers, is not to allow pet keeping, but to ensure there are other reserves, secure reserves, where excess tigers can survive peacefully.  This will encourage eco-tourism, re-forestation, prevent flooding and similar natural disasters and allow people to live in harmony with their environment.

And the tiger to flourish.

2 Responses

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1. 

   Alex Park

   Great reporting and strategic thinking.

   Could the Sumatran tigers be integrated into other protected and sizeable reserves in Indonesia (elsewhere) where the local tigers are threatened by extinction. Is that part of the wider/longer term FFtF strategy?

   February 22, 2010 at 11:11 am
2. 

   Rex Sumner

   Yes IF the forest is protected. There are some huge problems with local residents who are understandably terrified at the prospect of maneaters being released near them. I will get some more information on this and publish it shortly.

   February 23, 2010 at 1:01 pm