Malaysia tigers risk bullet as global summit nears
Date: 22-Aug-02
Country: MALAYSIA
Author: Patrick Chalmers
Three Malaysian rubber tappers have been mauled to death since April, and a fourth is missing following a series of attacks which led to the chief minister of the northern state of Kelantan to ask the army to shoot all tigers in the area.
The clash between poor people and endangered tigers is an indication of the complexity of issues facing delegates at Johannesburg's World Summit on Sustainable Development.
"I am all for the shooting of the animals rather than using tranquillisers or traps, as these methods will not solve the problem," local newspapers reported chief minister Nik Aziz as saying.
"We have enough tigers," he added in comments that alarmed environmental groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The WWF estimates Malaysia has just 500 to 600 tigers - about 10 percent of the world population of the protected species.
Malaysia's wildlife rangers shoot or trap any beast that turns into a man eater but sometimes get the wrong tiger, as appears to have happened in a recent case in Kelantan.
An autopsy on a 110 kg (240 lb) tigress, whose two young cubs fled into the forest when she was shot, found no human remains in her stomach and showed she had been shot before.
A suspected man eater was trapped alive the week after Nik Aziz's remarks on the same day as a 50-year-old woman reported having scared off another tigress preparing to attack her.
Experts say tigers attack people only when old or injured, though loss of habitat plays a big part as they are forced closer to farms and villages.
Wildlife officials blame logging in Kelantan for the spate of attacks. They also say roads into the forests provide easier access for anyone poaching tigers or hunting the big cats' preferred prey of wild boar and deer.
The Kelantan state government, controlled by the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), says Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government has kept it short of money. To make ends meet it has stepped up logging of state-owned forests.
PUG MARKS
A WWF project in Terengganu, a forested state neighbouring Kelantan, is trying to help farmers protect their cattle and teach the community a wider picture on tiger conservation.
Last year, tigers took around 58 head from the 1,000 cattle tended by families in the project area, losing them around 60,000 ringgit ($15,800). In real terms each dead cow costs a farmer around two-months' earnings.
"If tigers don't disturb me then it is a clear-cut offence to shoot a tiger. In the event the tigers make their way into a paddock then it's a different story," said Amzah Abdul Ghani, 38, who farms close to the Jerangau forest reserve.
WWF staff have deployed a network of cameras triggered by infrared beams to log predators and prey in the Jerangau reserve, a jungle bordering a state-run oil palm estate, where tiger pug marks dot the access roads.
Data from the past two years points to three resident animals in the area, with visits over the period by another nine.
Key to limiting tiger predation, the WWF says, is the use of custom-designed paddocks to protect cattle during the night.
Amzah hopes the scheme will work, but worries some on the estate may be too slack to corral their stock from dusk to dawn.
LEGAL LOOPHOLE
Dionysius Sharma, senior head of the WWF Malaysia's Animal Species Conservation Unit, says laws allowing the killing of tigers that threaten lives or livestock are a major loophole.
"People that work on these plantations often have licensed shot guns," he said during a visit to the Terengganu project.
"If they chance upon an animal they could theoretically shoot it and say they were being threatened," he added.
It would be tempting for smallholders who earn just a few hundred ringgit a month.
Sharma has in the past had offers of 10,000 ringgit for fresh tiger carcasses, with demand coming from local and international traffickers who sell their meat and organs to Chinese