World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently caught 12 Sumatran tigers on their video camera traps in the Sumatran rainforest in the Bukit Tigapuluh, or “Thirty Hills," landscape. This region has recently undergone rapid deforestation, leaving little area left for the tigers, orangutans and elephants that call it home.
The forest area is one of the globe's top 20 priority landscapes for the tiger's survival in the wild. At a global tiger summit in November 2010, the Indonesian government pledged to focus on the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape. Yet this forest is currently targeted for clearance by paper and rubber companies and illegal clearance by oil palm planters. If these practices continue, WWF researchers believe the local tiger population, as well as two local elephant herds, will swiftly vanish. The world’s only successfully reintroduced Sumatran orangutans, many of them previously rescued from illegal pet traders, would also lose their new home.
Together with David Tryse, WWF created a narrated tour in Google Earth of the plight of the Sumatran tigers and their orangutan and elephant neighbors. The tour's satellite imagery highlights the area that has already witnessed logging or extraction, and shows deforestation threats to these animals and indigenous people.
There are only 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild and images of the cubs like those featured in the narrated tour are very rare. Together with the other five remaining tiger species (the Amur, Malayan, Bengal, Indochinese and South China tigers), global tiger populations are at 3,200, down from 100,000 a hundred years ago. Only 7% of their original habitat remains.
Highlighting the plight of these forests and their wildlife has allowed WWF to build political, financial and public support to save these habitats not only in Bukit Tigapuluh but across Sumatra. remaining tiger forests of not only Bukit Tigapuluh but also Sumatra. Google Earth will doubtless play an increasingly important role in this effort.
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