The Sumatran tiger is the only one of the remaining tiger subspecies in Indonesia while sub-species of Java tigers and Bali tigers had already gone to extinction. Nevertheless, the Sumatran tiger is threatened to experience the same fate. Its population has declined over the rampant wildlife illegal trade and deforestation. It is estimated that the number of Sumatran tiger population is now only 7 percent in each habitat.
To conserve the Sumatran tigers, Salih said, tiger farming development
policies need to be carried out as practiced in China. Even though the
results of the captivation and breeding of the tigers are sold on the
market, but this is still within the framework of protecting the
population from the threat of extinction. Not only in China, said Salih,
Zimbabwe and Mozambique also succeeded in doing the same thing in the
population breeding of elephants to anticipate the threat of extinction
due to wildlife illegal trade. "Illegal trade is increasingly
threatening the existence of the Sumatran tiger," he said.
Dr. drh. Wishnu Nurcahyo from the UGM Faculty of Veterinary Parasitology
section has another opinion, the threat of extinction of rare animals
is not only due to the rampant trade in wildlife but also because of too
many animals that die from diseases caused by global warming impacts.
"Based on our experience in dealing with the orangutans in Kalimantan,
many are exposed to malaria due to infection from humans. There are
possibilities that many tigers are dead after getting exposed to
toxoplasma," he said.
"Indonesia is the only country in the world who suffers the extinction of two sub-species of tigers at once," said UGM fauna observer, Dr. Satyawan Pudyatmoko, in the seminar of Sumatran tiger conservation which took place in the auditorium of the UGM Faculty of Forestry on Saturday (16/4).
He said about 400-500 Sumatran tigers were still alive. Abdulhadi al-Khawaja was one of 14 defendants, most of them active with opposition political movements, who were charged with seeking to "topple the regime forcibly in collaboration with a terrorist organization working for a foreign country," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The human rights group said al-Khawaja’s wife and daughter spoke with him briefly after the court session, which was the first time they had been allowed to see him since April 9, when he was arrested and beaten.
They said that they could see a number of injuries to his face, and that he told them he had suffered four fractures to his face, including one to his jaw that required four hours of surgery, the rights group said. This number has dropped dramatically in the last 40 years. It once reached 1200s in the 1970’s. Therefore, to avoid extinction such as what happened to the Javanese tiger and Balinese tiger, he proposed immediate conservation efforts for Sumatran tiger, one of them by adding conservation area as sustainable population habitat. "To be sustainable in the 100 years, the conservation areas have to accommodate a minimum of 250 tigers in a habitat: 1 Tiger per 100 square kilometers," he explained.
Meanwhile, the habitat conservation area is currently only 58,321 square kilometers, whereas in fact the potential habitat area reaches up to 144 thousand square kilometers. "Unfortunately, only 29% of the tiger’s habitats are included in the conservation area," he said.
WWF Indonesia Wildlife Species Coordinator, Chairul Shaleh, said the threat of Sumatran tiger’s extinction is due to the rampant wildlife trading business throughout the world. In fact, this tiger trading business is the second largest wild animal business after the ape. "Each year an estimated 100 tigers are killed worldwide. The meat is sold for consumption, while the skin is collected," he said.