According to Yahoo News quoting a report by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), we now have less than 200 tigers in our jungles.
200 is a shocking number as in 2003, we had about 500 tigers here!
“This severe decline is largely a result of the snaring crisis across Southeast Asia that is decimating mammal populations in the region,” said WWF Singapore spokesperson Janissa Ng.
We were supposed to help increase the worldwide tiger population
What's more sedih is that the report detailed how Malaysia was the first country to champion a global aim to double the world tiger population by 2022.“One of Southeast Asia’s most important remaining tiger landscapes, Belum-Temengor in Malaysia, experienced a 50 per cent decline in tiger numbers from 2009-2018 largely due to widespread snaring,” said WWF Singapore in a report on 14 July.
Going by this trend, the tigers in our jungles could be totally wiped out by 2022.
The report went on to say that snaring is due to the steady demand for wildlife meat that some people still view as a delicacy.
(The Rojak Daily team call this group of people 'bodoh').
Other wild animals that make some bodoh Malaysians think "emmmm.. mesti sedap" include Asian elephants, saola and banteng.
Snares the main culprit
“Snares are also the principal threat to tigers in the region, and a major contributor to the fact they are now presumed extinct in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam."
"Without strong action, a snaring driven extinction wave could break across Asia,” said WWF's Tigers Alive Initiative lead Stuart Chapman, in the report.
Some of the things that WWF has been working on to stop the tigers from completely disappearing from our jungles include increasing monitoring and working with the community.
"To do that, we work closely with the Orang Asli, indigenous people (members of WWF’s anti-poaching teams) who conduct regular, systematic patrols to deactivate snares and reduce poaching rates we need to urgently step up conservation,” said Ng.
Tiger populations in other countries growing
The only ray of hope is that numbers also showed that tiger numbers around the world (other than Malaysia lah of course) had increased from 3,200 in 2010 to 3,890 as of 2016.
If you want to help out with WWF's tiger conservation efforts, head on over to their website.