How humanity broke the most beautiful beast
They are beautiful, they are irreplaceable, and they are practically all dead.
There are only around 400 Sumatran tigers left on the planet, putting them at the highest level of extinction warning possible.
For decades they’ve faced their homes being flattened by the acre to indulge a near endless demand for palm oil and paper pulp. They’ve faced traps and bullets so their teeth and bones can be sold as alleged medicines. They’ve faced poaching en masse so their skins can be uselessly converted to rugs and status symbols.
It’s a crisis that’s been going on for half a century and it’s the same crisis that cost the lives and extinction of every last Javan and Balinese tiger on neighbouring islands.
But the last decade has been more brutal than anyone anticipated.Between 2013 and 2015 the price of tiger parts surged and Sumatran tigers were hit by a wave of poaching that was unprecedented in its ferocity.
Their forests became drenched in snares. Armed poachers arrived in droves.
The casualty count could have been terminal for tigers.
If not for the truly heroic actions of the ranger teams that FFI and the park authorities train and equip, the chances of survival would have been pretty remote.
Yet while they made it through alive, the outlook for the 400 or so remaining tigers is bleak. The forest is still littered with snares, poaching is still a huge threat, tigers are still in danger of haemorrhaging numbers and - from what we can tell - the pandemic doesn’t seem to have discouraged the poachers.
This is the tipping point.
We have to save these creatures.
But there is one huge ray of hope here - the team on the ground. It’s true to say they are one of the most effective conservation units in the world. They have been absolutely instrumental in keeping Sumatran tigers on this planet - a challenge most would have failed.
They work fantastically in tandem with the authorities, have exceptional relationships with local communities and have a mind-blowing amount of field experience.
That gives us the chance we need.
These teams have been through hell and triumphed. If, through your donations, we can give them the resources to scale up what they do- to cover more ground, to clear more snares and to save more tigers - we can stem the bleeding numbers. We can save these wonderful creatures.
Please help these rangers cover more ground. If everyone reading this donates just £3, you could help provide supplies and equipment for the patrols removing the snares - saving tigers' lives. Thank you.
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