D

ecades after the last Javan and Bali tiger existed in the wild, hopes to reintroduce the huge felines in their natural habitats and boost their population have emerged, but with challenges.

The critically endangered Sumatran tiger is the only big cat that survives in its endemic habitat of Sumatra while the Javan and Bali tiger were declared extinct in the 1970s and 1940s, respectively.

But a study last year raised the possibility of spreading the tiger population outside of Sumatra through a tiger reintroduction program.

“A reintroduction effort, if successful, can extensively increase the range of the tiger population. It will allow us to have a backup if tigers in Sumatra continue to disappear,” Sunarto, a tiger specialist with the conservation group World Wildlife Fund Indonesia said on Friday.

A group of international cat specialists from the cat classification task force of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed in their latest study that there were only two tiger subspecies in the world: Sunda tigers and continental tigers, declaring extinct the nine subspecies that previously
existed.

The study, titled “Revised taxonomy of the Felidae”, recognized three Indonesian tigers as part of the Sunda tiger group. Further studies have also found that the three are close relatives and share the same genetic clade.

Sunarto said at least two countries, namely Cambodia and Kazakhstan, had initiated reintroduction programs by planning to release tigers into their forests to restore the tiger population. With the new taxonomy, it would be possible to translocate tigers under continental subspecies to revive the population in the two countries.

The population of Sumatran tigers has continued to decline on the back of extensive deforestation and poaching. Tigers are sought after as their body parts are used in traditional medicines.

Munawar Kholis, chairman of Sumatran tiger conservation group HarimauKita Forum, said protecting Sumatran tigers is important to ensure the health of ecological systems, as the big cats are apex predators in the food chain.

The Nature Communications Journal published a report last year that estimated that the population of Sumatran tigers had dropped from 742 adults in the wild in 2000 to 618 in 2012, while an official estimate from the Environment and Forestry Ministry stands at 600.

In a message for the 2018 World Wildlife Day, which falls on Saturday and focuses on big cats, IUCN director general Inger Andersen said around 80 percent of the world’s tigers have disappeared from the wild in the past 21 years.

“The good news is that solutions exist,” Andersen said on the official website of the 2018 World Wildlife Day.

The solution includes developing predator-proof fencing and setting up agricultural plots outside of tiger habitats for tourism.

As for the tiger reintroduction program, it was easier said than done, experts have warned.

Munawar from HarimauKita said the tiger reintroduction program for Java and Bali was genetically possible. However, finding the right location might be a challenge as forests in Java and Bali are too fragmented. Such conditions are not ideal for Sumatran tigers, as each individual needs at least 300-square-kilometers for its hunting territory and could possibly trigger human-animal conflict.

“It will need further research and it is only ideal to release them if there is an uninhabited island near Java,” he said.

There were only 400,000 hectares of forest remaining in Java, according to an estimate by the Indonesian Science Institute last year, a drastic decline from the 10 million ha it estimated in the 1800s.