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The Critically Endangered Sumatran Tiger Panthera Tigris Sumatrae in an ‘In Danger’ UNESCO World Heritage Site

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The Critically Endangered Sumatran Tiger Panthera Tigris Sumatrae in an ‘In Danger’ UNESCO World Heritage Site A pathway to recovery: the Critically Endangered Sumatran tiger Panthera tigris sumatrae in an ‘in danger’ UNESCO World Heritage Site W ULAN P USPARINI,TIMBUL B ATUBARA,FAHRUDIN S URAHMAT,ARDIANTIONO T RI S UGIHARTI,MUHAMMAD M USLICH,FAHRUL A MAMA W ILLIAM M ARTHY and N OVIAR A NDAYANI Abstract Reliable information on wildlife populations and Supplementary material for this article is available online at the threats they face is crucial for assessing the performance https://doi.org/./S of conservation strategies. As part of its efforts to improve the effectiveness of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia, and aid the recovery of flagship species, ’ the Park s management authority designated a , km Introduction forest block an Intensive Protection Zone. To set a baseline from which to evaluate the performance of this zone, we in- cross Asia and the Russian Far East the number of wild vestigated the density of tigers Panthera tigris sumatrae, and Atigers Panthera tigris has declined by an estimated % spatio-temporal interactions between tigers, their principle since (Seidensticker et al., ), and the species now prey and threats. The estimated density of tigers was . per occupies a mere % of its historical range (Dinerstein km , whereas in camera-trapping failed to record et al., ). A report in suggested there had been a re- any tigers in the Intensive Protection Zone. We found the cent rise in tiger numbers, generating significant interest study area contained a rich prey base, with muntjac deer from governments, NGOs, donors and the media (WWF, Muntiacus muntjak, macaques Macaca nemestrina and ). Although this appears to be good news, it may reflect wild pigs Sus scrofa occupying –% of the area, and sam- improved calculations based on more robust and wide- bar Rusa unicolor %. Despite these promising findings we spread site-based monitoring, rather than a real increase also recorded a relatively high number of people entering in the overall population size (Karanth, ; Karanth the Park illegally, with incidents over months, of et al., ). This emphasizes the importance of obtaining which % involved armed poachers. The poachers oper- reliable tiger population estimates to avoid unreliable re- ated mainly at night and were concentrated in two locations. porting that draws attention away from other conservation Law enforcement patrol teams were active during the day, goals or leads to the development of poorly informed strat- and therefore had little overlap with the poachers. egies (Karanth et al., ). Prioritizing these at-risk areas for increased protection by Tigers are threatened primarily by habitat loss, illegal rangers would further secure the Intensive Protection Zone, killing for international trade, and poaching of their ungu- and expanding ranger activity across the Park would support late prey base for domestic consumption (Bennett, ). efforts to remove the Park from UNESCO’s List of World Despite these prevailing threats, a range-wide analysis Heritage In Danger. found that given strong protection and management, en- ough wild habitat still remains to support a viable number Keywords Camera-trapping, density estimation, Intensive of tigers (Joshi et al., ). Successful conservation of the Protection Zone, protected area management, single session species will require securing the identified population occupancy model, spatially explicit capture–recapture source sites, which are considered to contain concentrations of tigers that, if well protected, have potential to repopulate larger landscapes (Walston et al., ). Most of these sites are within protected areas but this does not guarantee their safety, as many protected areas are under threat from down- WULAN PUSPARINI (Corresponding author), FAHRUDIN SURAHMAT,ARDIANTIONO, MUHAMMAD MUSLICH,FAHRUL AMAMA,WILLIAM MARTHY and NOVIAR ANDAYANI* grading, downsizing or degazettement (Mascia & Pailler, Wildlife Conservation Society, Indonesia Program, Bogor, Indonesia ). E-mail [email protected] The UNESCO World Heritage Site tropical cluster of pro- TIMBUL BATUBARA and TRI SUGIHARTI Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Kota tected areas in Sumatra contains the three flagship national Agung, Lampung, Indonesia parks of Bukit Barisan Selatan (, km ), Kerinci Seblat *Also at: Departement of Biology, Faculty of Math and Science, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia ( , km ) and Gunung Leuser ( , km ). These protected Received August . Revision requested November . areas contain c. % of the Sumatran tiger Panthera tigris su- Accepted July . matrae population, which underlines their importance not Oryx, Page 1 of 10 © 2017 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605317001144 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 167.98.22.132, on 15 Nov 2017 at 14:23:54, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605317001144 2 W. Pusparini et al. only to the survival of this subspecies but also to tigers in gen- et al., ) and was formally designated an Intensive eral (Linkie et al., ; HarimauKita, ). Despite the Protection Zone in (PHKA, ). The , km conservation efforts being implemented by the protected Intensive Protection Zone covers seven resorts (Sukaraja, area management authorities, however, the parks face on- Pemerihan, Ngambur, Biha, Balai Kencana, Balik Bukit and going challenges and are on UNESCO’sListofWorld Suoh), which are the smallest administrative units of the Park, Heritage In Danger (UNESCO, ). and is prioritized for more intensive management, with the In Kerinci Seblat a multi-agency law enforcement strat- primary aim of protecting the small population of egy has successfully tackled poaching of tigers and their prey Sumatran rhinoceroses (PHKA, ). This type of zonation (Linkie et al., a; Risdianto et al., ). However, conser- is a new concept for protected area management in vation gains are jeopardized by a recurring proposal by the Indonesia. It offers benefits to other priority species because local government to build a road that would bisect core tiger it overlaps with core habitat for tigers and elephants Elephas habitat and open it up to wildlife poachers and encroachers maximus, which also rely on ranger patrols. Thus, the con- (ALERT, ). The Wildlife Crime Unit operating in cept has potential as a replicable model for securing popula- Gunung Leuser since has disrupted a major trafficking tions of threatened wildlife in other protected areas. Here we network and facilitated the prosecution of tiger poachers provide the first assessment of the Intensive Protection Zone and traders operating in the Leuser landscape (Wildlife in its efforts to secure threatened wildlife, specifically the Conservation Society, unpubl. data). In parallel with this ef- Critically Endangered Sumatran tiger. We use new and en- fort an adaptive management patrol system, SMART, has hanced field survey and data analysis techniques to investi- been fully operationalized during –, with ranger gate spatial and temporal associations between tigers and teams conducting frequent de-snaring patrols. This has led prey and the anthropogenic threats they face, particularly to the removal of hundreds of snare traps (Wildlife poaching. Conservation Society, unpubl. data). These law enforcement efforts have been supported by the government of Aceh province, in which % of the Park is located. In the Study area provincial government declared a moratorium on oil palm Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park is located in the pro- development, which should protect critical forest habitat vinces of Lampung and Bengkulu. It is one of landscapes outside the Park (InfoSawit, ), and the government in which the Sumatran tiger is still present (HarimauKita, has also signalled its intention to withdraw support for the ), and is designated a long-term priority Level III planned construction of a geothermal plant inside the Park Tiger Conservation Landscape (Sanderson et al., ), (Hanafiah, ). This comes at a crucial time, as Gunung and a priority site for tiger population recovery (Global Leuser was downsized by %in. Tiger Initiative Secretariat, ). The Park is at –, m The recent history of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park altitude and thus supports various rainforest types, from offers many salutary lessons in protected area management. lowland to montane. The Park is surrounded by smallholder The Park underwent decades of relatively high forest loss, farms, cultivating mainly coffee and cocoa (Gaveau et al., starting in the s (Gaveau et al., ). During – ). These farms comprise c. % of the Park, mainly in the first camera-trap surveys of Sumatran tigers were con- the eastern section, in the Sekincau region, and are inhab- ducted. These yielded a Park-wide density of . tigers per ited by , families (TFCA Sumatera, ). The Park’s km but found lower densities in the central and more elongated shape makes it easily accessible to wildlife poa- heavily deforested northern sections of the Park (O’Brien chers, collectors of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) et al., ). In a survey of indirect sign across the and illegal loggers and encroachers (Gaveau et al., ). Bukit Barisan Selatan landscape indicated a widespread Our camera-trap survey focused on the middle section of tiger population (Wibisono et al., ). The central and the Park, which overlaps with % of the Intensive southern sections were found to have higher tiger occupancy Protection Zone (Fig. ). This area
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