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WILDLIFE biologist Dr Kae Kawanishi has been often called the tiger-lady, and this often leads to misconceptions.

“People generally think I am only interested in saving the tiger and nothing else,” she regrets. To her, tigers can be quite effectively saved in zoos. Instead, what she is really committed to is saving the Asian wilder ness. There is no better way to do this, she insists, than find ing solutions to problems that affect the survival of healthy populations of the top predator in their natural habitat.

“Tiger conservation is not just about saving the tiger. It is about their prey species, their habitat which they share with many other species including man, and their landscape which is often in direct competition with human needs. Tiger conservation is largely about people. People who live near tigers, people who consume tigers, and people who work on various facets of conservation.”

No other single species can effectively address the whole scope of wildlife conservation in Asia, she says. Indeed, her credentials suggest she is more than just a tiger specialist — she is an IUCN (World Conservation Union) Species Survival Commission cat specialist and tapir specialist.

Currently, Kawanishi is attached to the Department of Wildlife and National Parks as a research and conservation consultant.

Prior to that, she worked for six years on a joint tiger project between the University of Florida and the department in Taman Negara, which ended in 2002.

How did this Japanese woman end up in Malaysia?

“I sort of fell into the spot. In 1995 I first visited Malaysia to discuss the possible collaboration in wildlife research with the department and offered my expertise in any way useful for wildlife conservation in Malaysia. Then, based on my academic background and experience with camera traps and large cats, a study of tiger ecology using camera traps was suggested to me.”

At the same time, the former WWF-Malaysia director of conservation was also looking for someone to initiate an ecological study of tigers and mentioned the availability of funding for the work.

“It sounded perfect to me since I had been always interested in the ecology of top carnivores and conservation of tropical rainforests.”

Just before coming to Malaysia, she was involved briefly in the Siberian Tiger Project. Before that, she was camera trap ping jaguars and pumas in Central America.

Kawanishi is the first woman to have spent 34 months studying tiger populations through camera trapping in Taman Negara with park rangers and a crew of ----- (how many) people .

The joint project is now considered by the international conservation community as a benchmark study on tiger ecology in rainforests. It combined the on-the-ground expert knowledge of senior rangers with modern technology and science from the West. The study results support claims by the department that a healthy population of tigers still survives in Taman Negara.

The study itself, however, was not easy for any man or woman as the rainforest presents hazards that can be challenging.

It involved setting up 135 infrared remote cameras over 600sq km in Taman Negara. Each camera needed to be checked and maintained once a month. Given the terrain and density of the rainforest, her crew was only able to check on one or two cameras a day. This was not all. Danger lurked everywhere in the form of flash floods, elephant stampedes, tree falls, and attacks by a mass of bees.

Personal injury from falling into a freshly-cut sharp bamboo stem, sliding down a mud bank, venomous snakes and scorpions lay waiting. There were many times when she and her crew got lost in a lowland forest in the evening.

Her most scary experience was when she was alone after getting lost and felt the presence of another being who wasn’t part of her crew.

But nothing can keep her from her passion.

“I enjoy being outdoors the most. Wildlife research is a wonderful way to do so. Throughout my training to become a research scientist, I visited and lived in some of the most enchanting national parks in the world, including Taman Negara, and sometimes very remote faces of the earth and got paid for that.

“Although I had been a student most of my life until two years ago, I have been on a payroll (albeit small at times) as a researcher since 1991. To me, it is the definition of success when people pay me for doing what I love the most for an important cause.”

Despite her passion, it is not always easy being on the go.

The hardest thing about her job is having to leave her daughter behind when she is in the field. “She was a few months old when I was writing a proposal for the Taman Negara tiger project. Until she was five, she grew up sharing me with the tiger project. For the last three years I have been mostly based in KL since I have volunteered and worked at the department headquarters in Cheras.”

This allows her to return home every night which is great for her, but living in KL, she confides, deprives her mentally.

“Don’t take me wrong. Kuala Lumpur is a wonderful city. I’d rather live here than, say, in Singapore or Bangkok or Jakarta or even my home town Osaka, Japan. But I feel like I am becoming a zombie in the concrete jungle. Luckily my work schedule allows me to do some field work this year.

Striking a balance between a good mum and a professional researcher is my toughest challenge.” The forest remains her source of energy, strength, life and inspiration.

“Nature, she says, puts everything in the right perspective … While during the day, I focus on surviving, every night, I think about my daughter and nothing much else matters.

“Although neither of us are Malaysians, this is home for us now. I see her growing up in this country, being taught by Malaysian teachers, playing with Malaysian friends, drinking Malaysia water and breathing Malaysian air. I want to help maintain the values of this country that we live in.”

By values, she means that where tiger conservation is concerned, Malaysia is better off than most Asian countries.

“Neighbouring islands like Singapore, Java and Bali have already lost their tigers forever. The Sumatran tiger populations are under critical threat with very high poaching pressure. China is rapidly losing tigers, too, because dead tigers are worth a lot more than live ones.”

Malaysia is different, she says. She stayed on in Malaysia as she believed in Malaysia’s potential in saving the Asian wilderness.

“By comparing the conservation status of tigers, I can tell you that Malaysians have superior values to other Asian nationalities. The top predator in Japan was the wolf, which was exterminated about 200 years ago to make way for development. Now the natural ecosystem is in mess, with nothing controlling the number of meso-carnivores (medium-sized carnivores like destructive raccoon dogs that can locally wipe out vulnerable prey species) and ungulates that kill forest beds and rare trees of national interests. So please don’t ‘Look East’ on the predator control strategy,” she says.

She believes Malaysia has been successful in this area due to her people’s willingness to respect the law and live with tigers. We also have a stable socio-economic and political system, strict firearm controls and a strong wildlife depart ment which plays an important role in conservation.

“Only in mature and spiritual civil societies can humans allow potentially dangerous animals like tigers, with no monetary value to them, to co-exist,” says Kawanishi.

However, for a viable population of tigers to survive long term in this rapidly developing nation, she says a large contiguous forest where both tigers and their prey are protected is a must.

Malaysia’s endangered species such as tigers, elephants and rhinos are saved by the large forest reserves connecting isolated protected areas.

Such protected forests not only benefit wildlife, but provide clean water, air and biological and spiritual wealth to people.

This goes back to the values she wants to help maintain. “Maintenance of viable populations of the tiger is an essential component of sustainable development and ecosystem management. The tiger can be the star in Malaysia’s ongoing efforts to excel in biodiversity conservation.”

The next leg of the department’s work with Kawanishi involves local communities and tigers in the greater Taman Negara landscape.

This area is about 15,000sq km and is the largest contiguous forest with some good lowland forests remaining. It consists of Taman Negara National Park (4,343sq km) in the middle, surrounded by forest reserves, smallholding agricultural areas and isolated villages.

Kawanishi saw her first tiger in 1995 during the Siberian Tiger Project.

“I saw wild tigers on my first night in the Sikhote Alin Wildlife Reserve.

That was my first time. Little did I know about rarity of such opportunity, and Dr Dale Miquelle, who was showing me where the tigers were, was much more excited than me. We were tracking radio-collared tigers, but those we saw weren’t his study animals. Then in 1999, in my first ride into the Nagarahole National Park in India, tiger expert Dr Ullas Karanth produced both a tiger and a leopard in a short period of time.”

However, despite spending 34 months in the rainforest of Malaysia on foot, she has never come close to one. She gets different reactions from people when she tells them what she does for a living.

“I have seen an interesting contrast in culture. In the United States or in Europe, for example, wildlife conservation comes with a hint of heroism. True that it is glorified too much on TV, but there are literally thousands of citizen groups and just individuals taking small or large parts in the protection of wild landscapes, national parks, environment (such as recycling and car pooling), a town park, a hedge row, a tree in a neighbourhood. So in these countries, you feel
proud to be introduced as a wildlife conservationist or wild life researcher. And many envy that I do it as a profession and not as a hobby or volunteer on weekends.”

In Asia, and even in Japan, the majority of people think her strange. “The first question she was asked in Malaysia: ‘How do you make money doing that?’

“Well, I don’t make much money, in fact I don’t even make a minimum wage for labourers by Japanese standards, but I am happy doing what I do in Malaysia.”