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Indonesia’s few remaining Sumatran tigers need to be placed in more conducive breeding environments if the species is to be saved, conservationists say.

Satyawan Pudyatmoko, an expert on wild animals from Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University, said the fragmented tiger habitats in the forests of Sumatra should be connected to allow the tigers to roam and mate outside of their original habitats and prevent inbreeding.

“This will ensure strong genes to help them survive,” he said. Four tigers, he added, would need roughly 100 square kilometers where they could roam.

Chairul Saleh, from WWF Indonesia, said the fragmented habitats were the results of massive deforestation, which also resulted in the loss of prey for the tigers. As a consequence, he said, tigers are often forced to wander into settlements and kill livestock, leading to conflict with humans.

“This is an unfortunate situation for both tiger and man,” Chairul said.

The Sumatran tiger is the only remaining subspecies of the big cat in Indonesia. The Balinese tiger and the Javan tiger are extinct.

“The number [of Sumatran tigers] has decreased dramatically over the past 40 years,” Satyawan said. “There used to be an estimated 1,200 tigers in the 1970s, now there are only 400 left.” 

Chairul said efforts were under way to update the population count for the tiger, as the current one is based on data from 1993.

He added the government had set up six tiger conservation areas in national parks in Sumatra.

Satyawan noted, however, that the space designated for the conservation areas was just58,321 square kilometers out of an available 144,000 square kilometers.

“Unfortunately, only 29 percent of the tiger habitats are included in the conservation areas, leaving most habitats unprotected,” he said. “This will require close cooperation between all stakeholders for comprehensive spatial planning in Sumatra.”

Satyawan added that spatial planning in Sumatra was greatly complicated by the need for large wild animals such as tigers and elephants to be given sufficient space to roam in order to ensure their survival.

Indonesia and 12 other countries where tigers live in the wild have pledged to double their tiger populations by 2022 through the Global Tiger Initiative.