- Officials have confirmed that a Sumatran tiger was found killed by a snare in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province in late July, after farmers had reported encounters with the animal in human settlements over a period of around four months.
- The Sumatran tiger remains the most threatened tiger subspecies in the world, with fewer than 400 individuals estimated to remain in the wilds of Sumatra.
- Tiger species endemic to the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali were declared extinct during the 20th century following decades of hunting and deforestation.
- Researchers are calling for the various conservation and protected forests in West Sumatra and to unified into a single national park and for increased government regulation on snares.
PADANG, Indonesia — One of an estimated 400 of the world’s remaining Sumatran tigers was found dead on July 25 after becoming trapped in a wire snare set in Agam district, West Sumatra province.
“Based on the results of the postmortem, this female Sumatran tiger died due to a ruptured trachea, fracture of the neck bone and respiratory failure because of being entangled around the throat,” Lugi Hartanto, the head of the West Sumatra conservation agency, told Mongabay Indonesia.
The tiger was a female, no more than 3 years old, and had not given birth to cubs, Lugi said.
Residents in Agam had complained of a tiger prowling farming areas over a period of around four months prior to the discovery. Efforts by conservation fieldworkers to capture the tiger using a cage trap, with the intention of moving the animal to a new location, had not been successful.
“The plan since March was to evacuate the tiger, but we couldn’t catch it,” Lugi said.
Lugi said farmers commonly used small snares to trap wild boar, which are known to eat food crops across much of rural Indonesia. Conservation agency staff had visited many villages in West Sumatra to request that farmers not set snares because of the danger to Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae).
Lugi said agency staff would continue to work with residents living near tiger habitats, but emphasized the challenges involved because of the risks to life and livelihood that farmers faced on the ground.
Distant deeps
Sumatran tigers are the most endangered subspecies of tiger in the world, with fewer than 400 remaining in the forests of Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra.
Tiger subspecies endemic to the Indonesian islands of Java (Panthera tigris sondaica) and Bali (Panthera tigris balica) were declared extinct during the 20th century following decades of hunting and deforestation.
The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, in 2007 listed the Sumatran tiger as a critically endangered species following decades of killings and lax law enforcement. A year earlier, a ground survey of 326 retail outlets across 28 cities and towns in Sumatra found that 10% of these premises were selling tiger body parts, such as claws and bone.
That 2006 survey found body parts for sale in more than two dozen locations, including antiques dealers, gemstone traders, souvenir shops, and traditional Chinese medicine facilities.
Julia Ng, then a program officer at TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, a nonprofit that conducted the research almost two decades ago, estimated that 23 tigers were killed based on the body parts found. Ng said the likely total number of tigers killed in the 1999-2000 period was 53.
“Sadly, the decline in availability appears to be due to the dwindling number of tigers left in the wild,” Ng said in 2008.
Shifts in Indonesia since then have elevated species conservation, including new conservation laws backed by a more robust enforcement environment.
However, many communities in remote Sumatra remain largely removed from these changes in the political economy, and some Indigenous communities on the island remain wary of intervention by the state.
Last year, Mongabay Indonesia reported on the extent of the illegal trade in tigers, which included an instance of smuggling a tiger cub by motorcycle.
According to the West Sumatra conservation agency, a division of Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, four Sumatran tigers were recorded to have died in the province since 2021, either due to illness or snares.
In August 2021, a male tiger estimated to be around 8 years old was found in critical condition near the Sontang Dam Pasaman, a district in the province. Local people prevented an autopsy from taking place due to traditional beliefs. The animal was instead buried in the village.
In June 2022, Puti Maua Agam, a female tiger at the Dharmasraya Sumatran Tiger Rehabilitation Center, died following a pneumonia infection after conservation workers removed her from a conflict in Agam. Puti had been undergoing rehabilitation and was due to be released by the West Sumatra–based animal rehabilitation center.
In May 2023, a 2-year-old female was found tangled in a snare in Lubuk Sikaping, also in Pasaman district. Despite efforts by veterinary staff, the animal was too dehydrated and weak to make a recovery.
Rescuing live tigers trapped by snares is typically a fraught situation. In 2020, it took police and conservation agency staff more than nine hours to rescue a tiger in Indragiri Hilir district in neighboring Riau province.
However, there’s no accurate data on the number of tigers killed and sold for parts by poachers as part an illegal wildlife trade worth up to $23 billion globally each year. In recent years, police and environment ministry law enforcers have arrested and charged men for killing Sumatran tigers. Others are believed to continue to set snares in tiger habitats.
Striped bare
Wilson Novarino, a wildlife researcher at Andalas University in Padang, the West Sumatra provincial capital, said the discovery of the young female in Agam suggested positive fertility among the cluster of tigers in the district’s forests.
“The presence of a relatively young individual aged 2 to 3 years indicated a process of population rejuvenation,” Wilson told Mongabay Indonesia.
However, the death of the trapped tiger highlighted the dangers snares pose to various species, including Sumatran tigers, Wilson added.
To prevent future incidents, he said, fieldworkers must help implement animal control methods that avoid harm to nontarget animals, ensuring Sumatran tigers can prowl their habitat safely.
A 2017 study published in the journal Nature Communications concluded that Sumatra was home to only two tiger populations with more than 25 breeding females: the Leuser Ecosystem in the island’s north, and Kerinci Seblat, which is Indonesia’s largest national park, located around 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Agam.
Twenty-five breeding females is considered the threshold for a “secure source population,” which conservation scientists classify as a population capable of sustaining itself, and enabling animals for introduction in areas with insecure populations.
A handful of other tiger populations are believed to exist on Sumatra with fewer than 25 breeding females, including the location in Agam where the female was found dead in July.
Lead author Matthew Scott Luskin and colleagues concluded in the 2017 study that “while tiger densities have significantly increased over the last decade, the disproportionate loss of higher quality lowland and hill primary forest habitat, in combination with severe fragmentation of remaining strongholds, has offset this important conservation achievement and led to an equivocal or higher threat of extinction.”
Agam district lost 7,760 hectares (19,175 acres) of humid primary forest between 2002 and 2023. That was equivalent to a 13% reduction in total old-growth forest in a little over two decades, according to Global Forest Watch, a satellite monitoring platform operated by the World Resources Institute.
Wilson said Sumatran tiger habitat is increasingly being overlapped by human land uses as a result of the growing human population and forest encroachment. This calls for new and comprehensive strategies for coexistence.
The various conservation and protected forests in West Sumatra, particularly in Agam, should be unified into a single national park to enable more integrated management, he said.
Dwi Nugroho Adhiasto, who has researched the illegal wildlife trade for more than a decade, said snares remain the most significant threat to wildlife in West Sumatra’s forests. Snares cost next to nothing, are simple to put together, and there are no rules limiting their use, he said.
“To date there has been no regulation of snares, such as a ban on snares that endanger tigers, or supervision of snare distributors,” Dwi told Mongabay.
Lugi, the West Sumatra conservation agency head, said his office was responsible only for conservation forest areas, and that zones outside of these protected forests, where tigers may roam due to forest loss, was the domain of local governments.
“We need support from the local government to overcome this snare problem,” Lugi said. “If we’re not supported by the district and subdistrict governments, the [conservation agency’s] work will be extremely challenging.”
Lugi told Mongabay that conservation staff were investigating whether the snare was set specifically to kill a tiger, or whether it was meant for wild boar.
& what art
Three days after the tiger was found dead in Agam, the West Sumatra conservation department hosted an awareness event in Padang City for World Tiger Day, featuring artists and musicians.
The agency collaborated with artist Vic Sundesk, who performed his song “Save The Tiger.”
“I’m trying to channel awareness about conservation to everybody,” Vic told Mongabay.
Volunteers in friendly-looking tiger costume hugged young children in the morning. Dancers from the Runduk collective performed to onlookers as street artists Miranda Curly and Firman applied finishing touches to their bright tiger murals.
“Art can elevate an event and attract the attention of many people,” said Erlinda C Kartika, the agency’s coordinator in West Sumatra. “We just needed to provide these collaborations to attract the public’s attention — we chose art.”
The remains of the young female from Agam were buried near Padang city.
Banner image: A Sumatran tiger. (For representation purpose only; this is not the same tiger that was killed.) Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Indonesia team and first published here and here on our Indonesian site on July 29 and 30, 2024.
Indonesian official charged, but not jailed, for trading in Sumatran tiger parts
Citation:
Luskin, M. S., Albert, W. R., & Tobler, M. W. (2017). Sumatran tiger survival threatened by deforestation despite increasing densities in parks. Nature Communications, 8(1). doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01656-4