Sumatran tiger -- Panthera tigris sumatrae

Sumatran tiger status:

Sumatran tigers are critically endangered. The Indonesian Ministry of Forestry worked for three years with the IUCN's Tiger GASP team to develop the Indonesian Sumatran Tiger Conservation Strategy. This details management plans for both captive and wild tigers.

However, despite international assistance, experts remain very much in the dark regarding the Sumatran tiger. Knowledge of numbers and distribution is vague and information on the daily threats faced by this subspecies is still too little.

Four step rescue plan:

Lack of further controls will only see Sumatran tiger rate of loss accelerate. Four main steps will be followed in order to ease pressures and expand knowledge on wild tigers. These involve:

Population surveys.

Habitat evaluation.

Extended anti-poaching measures.

Tiger/human conflict appeasement. No government compensation scheme operates as yet.

Education programmes. The Sumatran tiger suffers from bad press and is still viewed as a pest by many local villagers. Some of these are slowly coming to understand that the tiger does have benefits to them in hunting the wild boar population which is out of control and causes high agricultural losses.

Captive breeding centres which also take problem tigers. The previous answer to this issue was to kill the cats. This meant the loss of their genetic contribution.

Sumatran - Page 1&2: In The Wild | 3: In Captivity | 4: Subspecies Description |
5: Weight & Length Figures | 6: Conservation

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