A Supplemental HCVF Assessment on the Sumatran Tiger ...

FINAL REPORT Tiger <strong>HCVF</strong> <strong>Supplemental</strong> <strong>Assessment</strong> – Serapung FMU
7 Overview
• The Sumatran tiger is critically endangered and threatened with extinction due to
restricted and increasingly fragmented habitat, and poaching across its range.
• PSF is an important component of the remaining habitat available for the Sumatran
tiger. The Siak-Pelalawan forest block represents one the largest areas of
contiguous lowland forest in Sumatra.
• The results of this study suggest that PSF in the Siak-Pelalawan forest, as tiger
habitat, is at least equivalent to other lowland forest types. The results of this study
support the assumption that all areas of the remaining natural forest within this
block, including that within the FMU, form part of a very significant tiger population
whose loss would significantly impact on the overall viability of the sub-species.
• Large sections of the PSF within the Siak-Pelalawan forest will be converted to
acacia and oil-palm plantations in the next few years. Given the past trends of
converting logging concessions into industrial timber plantations it appears likely
that only designated conservation areas will remain in the future. At present only a
few poorly protected, spatially separated, protected areas exist within this forest
block in isolation - insufficient to maintain a viable tiger population in the long-term.
• <strong>HCVF</strong> analysis, which can be carried out at a landscape or FMU-level, is a
systematic process to identify forests that have biological, physical, and/or
sociological values This study was commissioned as a supplement to an FMU level
<strong>HCVF</strong> assessment. However, as the Sumatran tiger is a wide-ranging, “coarsegrained”
species, living at low densities over large areas, it was found essential to
conduct a preliminary landscape level <strong>HCVF</strong> analysis in order to provide a context
for <strong>HCVF</strong> decisions at the FMU level.
• The preliminary landscape-level analysis found that there was a strong justification
for development of a conservation area network of protected and production forests
in order to ensure survival of the tiger in the Siak-Pelalawan forest block. However,
a further landscape level assessment is a necessary pre-cursor in this process.
• The FMU-level analysis could not provide a definitive answer as to whether the
moratorium area within the FMU should be classified as <strong>HCVF</strong>, primarily due to the
uncertainty of future land-use within the greater Siak-Pelalawan block and the
forested areas immediately adjacent to the FMU. However, it is recommended that
the SmartWood recommended logging moratorium remain in place until such time
that a comprehensive landscape-level assessment has been conducted, and a
multi-stakeholder declaration of intent made in relation to the creation of a
conservation area network in the wider Siak-Pelalawan block.
• The moratorium area represents only a fraction of the remaining available habitat in
the landscape, and is not critical for overall landscape connectivity. As such the
moratorium area is unlikely to represent a significant contribution to the viability of a
tiger population in a future landscape-level conservation network. However, in the
absence of certainty regarding the future condition of the Siak-Pelalawan block, all
habitat components of the current landscape should be considered, for the timebeing,
to provide potentially critical contributions to future tiger survival.
• Ultimately, a tiger-related <strong>HCVF</strong> in the Serapung FMU should be delineated with
reference to the likely habitat scenarios of the future landscape. Decisions made in
reference to this tiger <strong>HCVF</strong> will set a precedent for environmentally responsible
production forestry, for the application of <strong>HCVF</strong> analysis to wide-ranging, critically
endangered species, and for the future of wild tigers in both the Siak-Pelalawan
forest block and in other industrial forestry dominated landscapes across Sumatra.
Sumatran Tiger Conservation Program Pg 60/68