I’ve been working in Harapan Rainforest for three years. I’m a biodiversity officer, which means I keep an eye out for and monitor the wide variety of amazing species that call this rainforest home. From sun bears and hornbills to gibbons and pangolins, I keep an eye out for all of them, but by far my favourite is the Sumatran tiger. I like them so much that if I had to choose between a male tiger and a handsome man, the tiger would win every time!
Secretive
By nature, tigers are very secretive and solitary, so they're not always easy to find. Part of my daily routine is to set up camera traps around the rainforest, and to go out looking for footprints. Finding a fresh footprint is a little bit scary, but nothing compared to my experience a couple of weeks ago.
I hadn’t planned on going out in to the rainforest that day, but I got this feeling after lunch that I should go and check the camera traps.
I headed in to the centre of the forest with my colleague Karyanto. It’s a long way to go so to help us cover the ground we went on motorbike. After checking the last of the traps, we headed over to the next camera in Sungai Lalan before heading home. We were riding down part of the road that has dense bamboo on either side when there he was – a magnificent male tiger standing on the road in front of us. It’s hard to describe the feeling, but my initial reaction was “wow!” He looked well fed and healthy, and he seemed almost relaxed as he slowly moved off into the forest.
I knew there was a camera trap nearby and I’d hoped we’d been able to capture this amazing beast on film, so I hopped off the bike and collected the memory card. We reviewed the footage back at camp and unfortunately the male tiger we’d seen wasn’t there, but just five minutes before I’d arrived at the camera a group of three tigers had been photographed. We’re not sure, but we think it was a mother and two cubs.
This is only the second tiger I’ve seen and for Karyanto, it was his first. And we weren’t the only lucky ones – a week later, two of the other staff, Djoko and Heri saw one too.
Why we do it
With camera traps set up all around Harapan, we’ve been able to identify 17 different individuals in the forest since 2009. With less than 300 Sumatran tigers left in the world, it just goes to show why projects like ours are so important in helping to protect some of the world’s most threatened species.
One of Harapan's 17 Sumatran tigers caught on film. What a beauty!
If you’d like to help support projects like Harapan then you can donate your green Clubcard points to Together For Trees – our partnership with Tesco to help save rainforests all over the world, from Asia and Africa to the Caribbean.