Conflict Resolution can Help Save Tigers

A project in Malaysia shows that simple changes to livestock management can reduce conflict between local farmers and tigers.

by Emma Duncan , WWF
May 1st, 2002




Terengganu state, peninsular Malaysia - As dawn breaks, Mohd Azlan is already in the jungle, attending to the 20 cameras he has set up throughout a 170m2 area. These infra red-sensitive cameras capture everything that crosses their path, from elephants and tapirs to hunters and fishermen. But it is photographs of tigers he is after.

Azlan is a Scientific Officer at WWF-Malaysia, working on ways to reduce conflict between tigers and local farmers so that the two can co-exist. "The issue of human-tiger conflict is usually not addressed by governments," he explains.

"The Malaysian government's response when a tiger kills a person is to kill the tiger. If it kills livestock, then the tiger is captured and put in a zoo. But this does not solve the problem. If you remove one tiger from its territory, another will simply move in."

The situation is a little better in India, where to stop farmers killing tigers, the farmers are compensated for any livestock taken. But Azlan does not believe this is a solution to human-tiger conflict either. He believes the answer is to find a way to reduce the potential for conflict in the first place.

The first step towards this started in 1999 with a project aimed at developing a model site to demonstrate how human-tiger conflicts can be resolved. If the model site works, then the idea can be introduced throughout peninsular Malaysia, as well as to other countries where tigers and humans come into conflict.

The model site is an oil palm estate in Terengganu, one of the poorest areas in peninsular Malaysia. Part of a Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) scheme, the FELDA-Jerangau Barat oil palm estate is surrounded by secondary forest. The farmers who tend the plantation earn around US$1 per month, depending on the commodity price of oil palm, and the work is part-time, around 10 days per month. To increase their economic status, FELDA is encouraging farmers to integrate cattle farming into the palm oil plantation. The cattle not only provide a weeding and fertilization service, but can contribute up to 30 per cent of the farmers' income.

The problem is that the cattle are often killed by tigers that live in the surrounding forest - and many times without even being eaten. This naturally raises the ire of the farmers and reduces their sympathy towards tiger conservation. Livestock loss due to tigers is estimated to have cost over US$400,000 in the last decade.

The project first set out to determine why conflict between farmers and tigers is occurring. To do this, Azlan and his team looked at the activities of both the farmers and the tigers within the model area. One important aspect of the study was to determine why the tigers kill the cattle - is it because they are temporarily displaced from their usual territory by logging activities, because their habitat is being reduced, or because there is not enough food, for example due to over-hunting of their prey by people?

20 infra red-sensitive cameras were set up within the plantation and surrounding jungle. As tigers can be recognized by their unique stripe pattern, Azlan and his team could identify and monitor the movements of each tiger living in the area. They identified four resident and seven transient tigers within the model area - a relatively large number for the area under study.

But the most interesting finding was that cattle loss can largely be attributed to poor livestock management. Many of the 12 livestock paddocks are positioned directly in the paths taken by the tigers through the plantation. Moreover, most of the paddocks are not tiger-proof, or even cattle-proof.

"There has been no case where a tiger broke into a paddock to kill cattle," says Azlan. "If a paddock is in their path, then they will circle the enclosure. This causes the cattle to panic and they break out of the paddock trying to escape." In addition, the cattle are often not herded up at night, but left to wander free in the plantation.

Free cattle are a tempting target for tigers - much easier to catch than wild boar and deer, their natural prey. Indeed, there is evidence that the tigers use the cattle as hunting practice for their cubs, which explains why the cattle are not eaten, and some cubs are only taught to hunt cattle, exacerbating the problem.

The next step of the project was to persuade the farmers that better livestock management would lead to fewer cattle being killed. By showing the farmers photos from the cameras, Azlan demonstrated the movements of the tigers and how free cattle are an easy target. He has been advising farmers that better paddock placement as well as containing the cattle at night will help reduce the number killed.

The final step is to tiger-proof the paddocks, to prevent both tigers getting in and cattle getting out. The farmers are willing to do this, but lack the resources required. Azlan estimates tiger-proofing will cost about US$1,300 per paddock - too much for the farmers to pay by themselves. The situation is not helped by a recent change in government that resulted in reduced aid to the farmers. The project is currently on hold until the necessary funds can be obtained.

Despite this set back, Azlan says there has been progress, particularly with the attitude of the farmers to the tigers. "When I first came here, the farmers spoke as if the tigers were the property of WWF," he says, ""Your tigers are killing my cattle," they would tell me. Now, the farmers refer them as "our tigers", and they are willing to try and manage their cattle better".

"People talk about wildlife management to reduce conflicts between wild animals and people," he continues. "Wildlife cannot be managed. All that can be managed is the activity of people. By addressing tiger-human conflict at a local level with a model project, we can show that good livestock management works. This is the way to save the tigers."

(1000 words)

*Emma Duncan is Managing Editor at WWF International.

Further information

WWF's work on tiger conservation
Tigers are one of seven flagship species of the WWF Species Programme. The organization has a broad programme of conservation and research activities, not only in areas where tigers live, but also in countries involved in the illegal trading of tiger products.

In its new tiger conservation strategy and action plan, WWF has identified seven focal tiger landscapes where the chances of long-term tiger conservation are best and its involvement will be most valuable. Terengganu (the setting of the above feature) falls in one such landscape, namely Taman Negara-Belum-Halabala. In each of the focal landscapes, WWF aims to establish and manage effective tiger conservation areas, reduce the poaching of tigers and their prey, eliminate the trade in tiger parts and products, create incentives that will encourage local communities and others to support tiger conservation, and build capacity for tiger conservation.

Current threats to tigers
The IUCN 2000 Red List of Threatened Species has classified the tiger species as endangered, with the Amur, South China, and Sumatran tigers as critically endangered. In the past century, the world has lost three of the eight tiger subspecies. The Bali, Caspian and Javan tigers have all become extinct, and the South China tiger is facing the same fate. Historically, the tiger ranged from Turkey eastward to the coasts of Russia and China, and from as far north as Eastern Siberia to the Indonesian island of Bali. This historical range has shrunk dramatically over the years and today the remaining tigers, numbering perhaps no more than 6,000, occur patchily across the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and the Russian Far East, with a small number still surviving in China and possibly North Korea.

Until the 1930s, sport hunting was the main cause of declines in tiger populations. Although trophy hunting persisted as a major threat to tigers up to the early 1970s, the greatest threat between the 1940s and the late 1980s was loss of habitat due to encroachment by a burgeoning human population, logging, and oil palm and pulp plantations. In China, several thousand tigers were exterminated in the name of progress and development during the Cultural Revolution. In the 1990s, hundreds of tigers were killed to meet the demand for their bones and other parts, which are used for traditional medicines especially in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, but also in Japan and Southeast Asia. Tiger parts are also exported illegally to ethnic Asian communities all over the world, including those in Australasia, Europe, the USA, and Canada.

Compounding the threat to tigers is a growing conflict between the tiger and the interests of neighboring communities. Revenge killing of tigers, often by poisoning or electrocution, to protect livestock is on the rise. Over-hunting of the tigers' natural prey is also emerging as a major factor causing declines in tiger populations across their range, and a factor that also contributes directly to cattle lifting.

http://www.borneoproject.org/article.php?id=172