Tigers are disappearing from Southeast Asia. A forest in Thailand is offering new hope
The tiger population in the country’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM) — an 18,000-square-kilometer (6,950-square-mile) area of forest encompassing 11 national parks and six wildlife sanctuaries — is estimated to have more than tripled between 2007 and 2023, from 41 to 143.
The remarkable comeback was observed in a new collaborative study led by Thailand’s Department of National Parks (DNP) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), newly published online in the scientific journal Global Ecology and Conservation.
It’s not just tigers bouncing back: a companion study, published alongside the tiger assessment, found that populations of threatened ungulate species — hoofed mammals like deer and wild cattle, that are the main prey for the tigers — have doubled in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, one of three protected areas, along with Thung Yai East (TYE) and Thung Yai West, in the forest complex.
This increase reflects “more effective management” of the forest and is the result of more than a decade of conservation interventions, says Pornkamol Jornburom, director of WCS Thailand and one of the wildlife biologists working on the new study.
“This forest complex is the home of many endangered species,” says Jornburom. She hopes WEFCOM can be “a role model for conservation and recovery of the wildlife population.”
A roaring success
Jornburom, who has worked on conservation projects in WEFCOM since 2005, says that she’s seen the landscape change dramatically.
One of the biggest threats to wildlife in the area is poaching, which is best combated with patrols. In 2005, these were limited in number and not systematic, says Jornburom, adding that rangers “would maybe report back to their managers verbally, so there was no data collection or recordings.
In 2007, conservationists installed camera traps which built up a data set that researchers could use for their population assessment in the current study across the three main protected areas. Individual tigers can be identified by their unique stripes, similar to a human fingerprint.
Jornburom says the 250% increase in tigers, as well as the twofold increase in banteng and sambar deer, is proof that the increased patrols are working.
“When we conserve tigers, it actually leads to conserving many other species: not only the prey, but also the habitat,” she says.
Once widespread across Southeast Asia, tigers became extinct in Singapore, Java and Bali in the 20th century, and in recent years have also disappeared from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the wild.
This has left small, isolated tiger populations in Myanmar, Indonesian Sumatra, and peninsular Malaysia — the latter of which is worrying conservationists after a recent spate of tiger deaths.