A Supplemental HCVF Assessment on the Sumatran Tiger ...

FINAL REPORT Tiger <strong>HCVF</strong> <strong>Supplemental</strong> <strong>Assessment</strong> – Serapung FMU
occasionally depopulating entire villages (Marsden 1966). Estimations of tigerattributed
deaths of humans have ranged from a dozen per year for the entire
island in the 1920’s (McDougal 1987), to more than 100 people killed during 1951
in Bengkulu province alone (McNeely & Sochaczewski 1988).
The relationship between traditional people and the Sumatran tiger is usually one
of reverence and respect, and is often characterized by a delicate but generally
harmonious coexistence. Occasionally this relationship breaks down, particularly
where rural migrants dominate in place of traditional forest-dwelling communities,
leading to localised and sporadic conflict events, resulting in human deaths and
material losses from livestock predation. Estimations of tiger-attributed humans
deaths have ranged from a dozen per year for the entire island of Sumatra in the
1920’s, to more than 100 people killed during 1951 in Bengkulu province alone.
More recently Nyhus (1999) has specifically addressed the history, manifestation
and extent of tiger-human conflict in Sumatra. A review of media reports
suggested that between 1978 and 1997 a total of 147 people were reported killed
and 30 injured by wild tigers in Sumatra. The probability of conflict is highest in
multiple-use forests where tigers and people are in close proximity. Conversely,
conflicts are least frequent in more isolated protected areas where human
intrusion is relatively low. However even low levels of conflict are recognised as
capable of causing considerable hostility towards tigers (Nowell & Jackson 1996,
Tilson & Nyhus 1998) and promoting tiger persecution. The resulting retribution
for attacks by tigers may be a significant reason for the tiger’s decline (McDougal
1987, Ginsberg & Woodroffe 1998, Nyhus 1999, Woodroffe & Ginsberg 2000)
and a failure to mitigate these conflicts has limited the effectiveness of
conservation efforts that focus on protection and landscape-level management
initiatives. Experiences from the Bali and Javan tiger provide a preview of the
effects of these phenomena, where hunting and retribution for attacks on
livestock and people have pushed small populations to their ultimate extinction
(Seidensticker & Suyono 1980, Seidensticker 1987).
At present the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry defines problem tigers as those
which leave their natural habitat and come in contact with local villages, killing
and eating livestock or people (Ministry of Forestry 1994). However, to date
Indonesia does not possess a formal policy for the treatment of problem tigers or
reducing tiger-human conflict where it arises. A failure to mitigate these conflicts
where they exist has limited the effectiveness of conservation efforts that focus
on protection and landscape-level management initiatives (Gadgil 1992, Forester
& Machlis 1996, Decker & Chase 1997, Nyhus 1999).
2.4.5 The Siak-Pelalawan forest’s context for tiger conservation
Conservation efforts for the Sumatran tigers in the past have been focused within
Sumatra’s national parks - including the development of Tiger Protection Units
(TPU) and intensive ecological studies. More recently conservation initiatives
have included efforts to combat illegal tiger trade, human-tiger conflict mitigation
and looking beyond national parks by managing populations on a landscape
scale. PSF is a known tiger habitat but has until recently gone unrecognised as
contributing significantly to the overall viability of the Sumatran tiger subspecies.
This is reflected by a lack of a basic ecological understanding of tigers in PSF,
and by the continued low investment in protecting this habitat type and its tigers.
The Tiger Conservation Unit framework (Dinerstein et al. 1997, Wikramanayake
et al. 1999) represents a relatively recent global tiger conservation initiative which
considers habitat integrity, poaching intensity and population status of tiger
subspecies, using a landscape-ecology approach to identify and prioritise Asia
into Tiger Conservation Units (TCU). Eleven TCUs have been identified in the
Sumatran Tiger Conservation Program Pg 18/68