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I WASN’T sure whether to
laugh or cry when I opened my copy of the New Straits Times last Monday;
to my dismay there was a report on more irrational, ad hoc measures
being taken to handle the tiger-human conflict in Kelantan.
According to the report, the Federal Government had allocated RM600,000
to tackle the threat of tigers in Jeli and Tanah Merah. The bulk of the
allocation would be used to buy traps and other equipment to locate and
catch the animals.
I am confused. After all the wildlife and nature experts have said about
solving the tiger-human conflict, here is the Federal Government taking
two steps backwards. Are the authorities, who have the power to do so
much, even listening?
Why must they choose the least effective course of action?
Experts believe that removing a potentially harmful tiger from an area
will not solve the problem, for as soon as a tiger vacates the area it
defends, another tiger will move in.
If the Department of Wildlife continues collecting tigers from the wild,
what are they to do with them?
Tigers cannot be reintroduced to the wild, so the idea of sending them
to Taman Negara is out.
There could be other tigers in the area the trapped tiger is released
into, and it will be possibly killed or chased out for “trespassing”.
This will force the displaced tiger into human territory if it cannot
find space for itself.
Send them to the zoo?
At the Malacca Zoo, there are already 18 captured tigers being housed in
small cages due to lack of space and money to build them proper
enclosures.
The act of locating and trapping tigers in Kelantan also makes the
tigers out to be the culprits, when really, they are the victims.
They are the ones which need protecting here — after all, what would you
do if someone bulldozed your home, removed all your sources of food,
silted up your watering hole, and justify you few options as to where to
go?
You would, for sure, subscribe to desperate measures, as are the tigers
that have been accused of attacking humans.
Why, I wonder, do the authorities want to look the other way when all
the facts have been laid on the table? My mind succumbed to all sorts of
conspiracy theories.
Maybe the authorities want to use this as an excuse to get rid of as
many tigers as they can remove from the wild so that logging concessions
can be given out, freely.
They must think that fewer tigers will mean less conflict; resulting in
less publicity on indiscriminate logging activities.
This is where they are wrong. The more forest is uncovered, the more
conflict we will experience with wildlife.
That the rare clouded leopard, last spotted in the wild in 1997, was
foraging at a village chicken coop recently, is testimony to this.
In the past weeks, there had been extensive media coverage on the
tiger-human conflict issue. A lot of expert opinion was sourced, and
in-depth special reports on how best to manage the problem were
presented. Many remained hopeful that the authorities would do the right
thing.
We were all to be disappointed.
Up in arms after this new turn of events, and in need to hear some sane
suggestions, I called up a few wildlife people. They were asked how they
would solve the tiger-human conflict if the money and onus were given to
them. Here are their opinions:
* Dr Razeem Mazlan Abdullah, veterinarian at the Malacca Zoo where
all the trapped tigers are sent.
I would come up with a proper management plan. These animals, living on
the fringes of villagers and plantations, have become urbanised. We need
to learn how to co-exist with them.
Public education is important for this. From the experience of the study
in Jerangau Barat (conducted by WWF), it is found that tigers come out
to hunt between 7am and 9am and at night. Tappers should be told not to
go out to the plantation at these times, and to keep their cattle
paddocked. If they do go out they should be in groups.
I would focus on changing attitudes. A sum of RM600,000 is enough to
build two or three enclosures in my zoo to keep tigers but it is not
enough to solve the tiger-human conflict.
* Christopher Shepherd, programme officer, Traffic Malaysia.
There are a whole lot of things that could be done. Trapping them is
only postponing the problem.
The problem can only be solved if there is greater awareness on how to
reduce the conflict. For instance, educating the villagers and
plantation workers, and controlling the growth of brush in plantations.
The authorities need to ensure that the prey base in areas that have
tigers are maintained. The sambar deer, which is a tiger prey, is
overhunted in many areas.
In Sumatra, a lot of tigers get caught in snares meant for other animals
and become crippled. Their injuries force them to hunt domestic prey. If
this is a problem here, it must be addressed.
Finally, there has to be adequate habitat for the tigers. The more we
convert land for agriculture and other uses, the more tiger-human
conflict we will have.
If you notice, this is not just a problem with tigers — other protected
species are facing the same conflict with humans.
* Dr Dionysius Sharma, senior head, Animal Species Conservation Unit,
Worldwide Fund for Nature, Malaysia.
I would use the money to apply a different approach. I would work
closely with land managers like the Forestry Department and look into
habitat management to solve the problem.
We need to go into the forest and see why tigers are coming out. Then we
need to develop a long-term plan for tigers.
WWF already has a long-term proposal involving four areas of concern:
tigers in conflict with humans; managing large mammals in protected
areas; managing large mammals in areas where there is logging; and
managing large mammals in trans-frontier protected areas like the
Malaysia-Thai border.
We need to look at this proposal and see which is relevant to Kelantan.
* Datuk Jimin Idris, chairman, Malaysian Association for Zoological
Parks and Aquaria.
I would define the area where there are tigers and declare it a tiger
sanctuary. I believe we can lead the world in the way we deal with the
tiger-human conflict issue. The question is, do we want to?
Solving this problem is really not a difficult thing to do, but we must
have the will.
You cannot keep confining free-ranging animals to enclosures. I am
making a plea to the authorities to see it from a different angle.
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