WITH fewer than 150 remaining in the wild, the Malayan tiger — the subspecies is found only in Peninsular Malaysia —is on the brink of extinction.
We started losing our wild tigers from 1950, when 3,000 of them were estimated to have roamed our forests.
Conservationists warned in 2019 — when it was already at a low of 150 — that if efforts to save our tigers are not intensified, they would be gone by about 2022.
Two years on, they are still around, though at a critically endangered number. This, too, is an estimate, a national census of 2020 declared.
This suggests that some steps have been taken to save them, but not at the intensity such a low population demands.
Those tasked with saving our national icon know what the threats are and how to overcome them, but policymakers at the federal and state levels are torn between two loves — economy and ecology.
Loving one is to ignore the other, unless a happy balance can be struck. Now that is a tough strike. But forest plantations don't result in a happy balance between growing the economy and safeguarding the ecology, as a state or two have discovered.
There are two reasons for this unhappy result.
Firstly, natural forests must be cut down before forest plantations happen.
Secondly, some plantation companies cut the trees for logs, but don't replant them. Either way, wildlife habitat shrinks.
Conservation of the Malayan tiger must begin with over coming an immediate threat: poaching of tigers and their prey.
Illegal wildlife trade is a big business that is valued at US$216 billion per year. With that kind of money, it is not hard to recruit poachers.
Both locals and foreigners are involved in lucrative international wildlife crime syndicates, which have halved the population of the Malayan tiger over 10 years.
Given the covert nature of their hunts, they are hard to detect. Besides, we just don't have the number of rangers to cover the wildlife habitat.
One estimate puts the number of rangers required to cover the wildlife habitat in Peninsular Malaysia alone at 2,500.
The lack of human and other resources is part of the reason for the dwindling number of the Malayan tiger.
Another threat is the fragmentation of wildlife habitat, especially that of the tigers. They need vast territories of natural forest where they can hunt and breed, not isolated patches that shrink their prey and mates.
Thus restricted, they die of starvation, disease and inbreeding. Wildlife experts have long warned us that the extinction of the apex predators would have a devastating domino effect on Malaysia's biodiversity.
We can't deny that the Malayan tiger's habitat has shrunk. Logging, agriculture and other land uses — both regulated and un regulated — pose a danger to the survival of the tigers.
No habitat, no prey, no breeding, no Malayan tiger. As simple as that.
Fragmented habitat needs to be restored if we are serious about wanting the population of our iconic tigers to at least grow to 300, if not to the 3,000 of the 1950s.
This requires political will for conservation, at both federal and state levels.
Our national icon, which the Malayan tiger is, deserves nothing less.