Indonesien vil officielt beskytte verdens sjældneste tigerart – Sumatra-tigeren – men rovhugsten fortsætter ufortrødent i vigtigt tigerreservat
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has recorded images of 12 endangered Sumatran tigers, including a mother playing with cubs, in an Indonesian forest that it said is about to be cleared by loggers.
WWF, which estimates that there are only 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, captured the images on camera traps in the Bukit Tigapuluh forest on central Sumatra island, which has seen rampant deforestation (omsiggribende afskovning) for palm oil and paper plantations.
– What is unclear is whether we found so many tigers because we are getting better at positioning our cameras or because the tigers’ habitat is shrinking so rapidly here that they are being forced into sharing smaller and smaller bits of forests, said Karmila Parakkasi, who leads WWF’s tiger research team in Sumatra.
– This video confirms the extreme importance of these forests in the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem and its wildlife corridor, said Anwar Purwoto, the director of WWF Indonesia’s Forest and Species Program.
The forest where the tigers were recorded is under imminent threat of being cleared by the pulp and paper industry, despite being designated a “global priority Tiger Conservation Landscape”.
It is one of six areas the Indonesian government pledged to protect at last November’s tiger summit of world leaders in Russia.
Bukit Tigapuluh is located in Riau and Jambi provinces in Central Sumatra. Between 2004 and 2010, Bukit Tigapuluh lost 205.460 hectares of forest to pulp and paper and the palm oil industries.
