ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[Matias]

Tiger Conservation: Why It Is A Political Animal

Why there isn't enough being done to save the Malayan tiger.

MUNA NOOR
SATURDAY 31 JULY 2021
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*This image is copyright of its original author

Numerous threats are faced by those attempting to save the Malayan tiger, including governmental and environmental challenges. Photo: WWF Malaysia

*This article was first published on July 29th, 2020.

Compare Malaysia’s progress with that of Russia, India and Nepal. 

In 2018, figures recorded in India showed that Royal Bengal tigers have doubled in number from 2016’s 1,411 to 2,967. In Nepal, numbers have risen from a baseline of 121 tigers in 2009 to 235 in 2018, an impressive achievement in a country barely recovered from a decade-long civil war.
 
And in Russia, where an estimated population of 40 Amur tigers were clinging to survival in the 1940s, these big cats have been brought back from the brink, with 433 individuals recorded in 2015. Strong leadership and unwavering government support for wildlife conservation have been cited as instrumental to the progress in those countries. It’s something Malaysia desperately needs. “Fundamentally, the political will was not there in both the Federal and state governments,” said Kanitha Krishnasamy, Director for Traffic in Southeast Asia and MYCAT Working Group member, when commenting on Malaysia’s failure. 

Since 2013, WWF-Malaysia and Traffic Southeast Asia have called for greater leadership and appealed for Malaysia’s Prime Minister to set up and chair a “Tiger Task Force”. The Tiger Task Force is based on India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), which was set up by India’s Prime Minister in 2005 and is chaired by the Minister of Environment and Forests. 

The NTCA is granted statutory and administrative powers which allow it, amongst other things, to relocate entire villages and compensate their residents, in order to create buffer zones to provide tigers a safe haven and reduce human-tiger conflict. 

In Malaysia, a similarly organised central coordinating structure with the ability to make executive decisions on policy, would allow issues of jurisdiction to fall away, foster inter-agency collaboration and facilitate the allocation of resources that long-term tiger conservation requires. 


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