Iswadi, Herizal, Suhardi, and M resting on the way to the field.
This past week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to follow along on a forest patrol inside Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park conducted by the elite rangers that make up the Sumatran Tiger Protection and Conservation Unit. The unit is specially tasked with protecting and conserving the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger, but they also perform other ranger duties as well. Since the unit was created in 2000 it has expanded to five four-man teams and has achieved a great deal of success in preserving the Sumatran tiger. I followed one of the unit's teams for 5 days through the park's dense forest and rugged terrain, an experience that was extremely rewarding in terms of my research while at the same time being one of the most grueling tasks I've ever undertaken.
Heading Out...
Provisions for 5 days
I drove over to Bangko in Merangin district (4 hours from where I live) the day before the patrol was to start in order to get prepared. The team was kind enough to prepare the "logistik" or provisions that I would need for five days, which you can see in the photo to the right. The bags contain dried minnows and about 8 pounds of rice. The guys at the barracks stayed up late since it's Ramadan (a post on the Muslim holy month will follow) and before they begin the day's fasting they eat a big meal at around three in the morning and go back to sleep. Our patrol plan was to camp at the edge of the forest on day one, search for illegal animal traps for three days, and then head back to the barracks on the fifth day. This particular patrol was a bit special because once a year the five teams that make up the Tiger Protection and Conservation Unit have a contest to see who can find the most traps. The team that comes in first wins a bonus of 3 million rupiah (a bit over US$300), whereas the second place team gets 2 million, and the third place team gets 1 million. We woke up around 7:30 am, loaded up the ancient Toyota Land Cruiser (see photo above) that had been pressed into service because one of the team's Ford Rangers was in the shop, and set out on the 4-hour drive to our departure site in the Lembah Masurai area of Merangin district. We felt every bump along the extremely rough road, but finally we made it to the village of Nilo Dingin, smack dab in the middle of an area that is currently experiencing some of the highest rates of forest encroachment on the whole island of Sumatra.
Chatting with coffee farmers
We hiked a couple of kilometers through the sprawling coffee gardens that forms the mainstay crop of the thousands of farmers that have flooded into the Lembah Masurai area to farm. The volcanic soil here is rich and highly productive, and very high yields have drawn as many as 18,000 families from as far away as Lampung and South Sumatra. They have become a major problem for authorities charged with managing protected forests, as they have begun encroaching into the park and other conservation areas. We spent the night with a friendly farmer from Pagar Alam in South Sumatra, who told us he'd been farming coffee here for four years and that it has allowed him to send his children to university. We enjoyed his hospitality and the basic comforts of his pondok (1) while other farmers showed up to check out the foreigner and the forest police.
Into the Woods...
After a 3am meal we went back to sleep, waking at around 7am to head into the forest. We trekked up the steep slopes of Mt. Masurai, a dormant volcano. My prime concern was not to fall behind and not to become a hindrance, since there was a prize at stake for the team. I was pretty nervous about not being able to keep up given that these guys go into the forest for a living. In addition, I'd had my appendix removed a few weeks before, and even though I felt 100% healthy I wasn't sure how my body would react to strenuous hiking. I had been training for the patrol before my surgery, but after I stopped to allow myself to fully recover. After a few hours hiking we reached the top of a 40-meter waterfall and stopped to take a break. The view was really breathtaking; as we walked across the top of the waterfall I imagined myself in one of those panoramic cinema shots taken from a helicopter you sometimes see in the movies. I know it sounds corny, but it was exhilerating. Shortly after this we found our first active snare, which you can see in the photo below. This particular trap was set by poachers for a forest goat, which brings about US$5 per kilogram at market. The poachers usually set the traps along trails since animals follow trails because the going is easier. This particular trap was worth 50 points in the contest, so everyone was excited.
Team leader M describing how the trap works.
At around 4pm we found a spot to camp so that we could set everything up before dark. Though we camped beside the trail, the guys told me that normally they try to camp off the trail and near a river, since beliau (2) likes to use the trail. They told me that they ask the tiger's permission to camp by the trail when they need to, because "we are under (his) rules here".
The Next Two Days...
100% waterproof shelter.
The next morning we hunkered down because it was raining. Amazingly the shelter the team constructed kept us 100% dry. By about 10.30 the sky had cleared, so we broke camp and got back to work. Although I started out feeling fine, the second day really took its toll on me because we did a lot of ascending and descending over difficult terrain. The guys had no problem though; it was a particularly humbling experience trying to keep up with the nimble forest rangers because I kept slipping and getting caught up in thorns. Every time you fall or have to extract yourself from the ever-present pokey-plants that seem to consciously come after you it saps a bit more of your energy. The guys seems able to avoid all of these hazards, though, and they climbed up the slopes like Spidermen. Particularly impressive was the fact that three of them were keeping the Ramadan fast, which prevents them from eating food or even drinking water during the day. Though I couldn't (and really had no desire to) keep the fast, I limited myself to a couple of packets of condensed, sweetened milk and a package of potato candy each day. I did make sure to keep hydrated, though.
By the end of the third day we were ready to descend back towards the pickup point. We started at about 9am and hiked until about 6pm, by which time I was completely wrecked. Coming down off the mountain involved going straight down the slope, cutting a trail as we went, which was particularly exhausting. But after a long day we finally made it back to a village and hunkered down for the night. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the park and the challenges it faces as well as the heroic job done by the PHS unit. They are extremely dedicated and committed to their jobs, and they are proud of the work they do. "When poachers see the black coming, they run, because they know there's no negotiation", said one of the PHS members, referring to the fact that they wear black whereas regular forest police wear green. There's a subtle jibe here, and I'll let you figure it out.
I also learned a lot of neat forest tricks from the PHS guys. Despite being hard-core forest dudes, they are some of the nicest folks you could hope to meet, and they took really good care of me. I'd like to say that I'll be out on another patrol soon, but to tell you the truth, I'm not sure if I can handle it.
Lend a Helping Hand...
I was thinking about what I could do as a thank you to the guys for letting me tag along and it occured to me that one piece of equipment they could really use and would very much appreciate is a Leatherman. I checked on Ebay and it looks like I can get the Leatherman Sidekick for about $35 per (3). Since there are 20 team members, I'd need about $800 to buy one for each team member. But I'm still a poor PhD candidate.
So here's the deal. If you'd like to buy a Leatherman Sidekick for the members of the Tiger Protection and Conservation Unit, or if you'd like to make a partial contribution, please contact me at geografikanusantara@gmail.com. Or if you'd like to buy a Sidekick and send it to my Hawai'i address I can give you the information if you email me. I don't have an NGO or anything like that, so you'll have to trust me with the money. If you look at my blog you can see what I'm all about; I'm not doing this to scam anyone. If I can collect enough money I'll ship the tools to the unit's coordinator. This is a good way for you to make a useful contribution to tiger conservation. Thanks in advance!
UPDATE:
So far I'm up to 4 leathermen, which is 20% of my target. Thanks to the generous person that made the first contribution!
UPDATE UPDATE:
Thanks to two more generous folks I'm up to 8 leathermen, 40% of the target. Thanks much!
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:
Now at 11 leathermen thanks to another donation.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:
Just received another donation of two leathermans to bring the total to 13. Only need 7 more....
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:
15 Leathermans and counting!
Notes
(1) Pondok means "hut" and in this case refers to semi-permanent structures built in upland farms where the farmers stay while they are working their fields. Normally the farmers have a house in town and only stay in the pondok when it is time to plant or harvest, but here in Nilo Dingin the encroaching farmers stay there most of the time.
(2) Beliau is a non-gender specific respectful third-person form of address. In the forest here you say "beliau" rather than "harimau" (tiger) because it is believed that literally saying "tiger" will invite the beast to come. I use "he" in my translations because it is simpler
(3) A reader informed me that Amazon has them cheaper than the original $40 I posted. The $35 includes the sheath but doesn't include shipping. If you get free shipping you can have it sent directly to me.
This is the second post describing my vagabondage through the provinces of Jambi, West Sumatra, Bengkulu, and South Sumatra. I'm currently at 1100 kilometers, which is a long way on Sumatra. This post describes some of the things I saw during the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days of my trip. The trip is part of my dissertation research, which examines the politics of conservation at Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park. I've embarked on this long motorcycle ride to visit seats of government and to talk with elected and appointed officials about policy direction and their perceptions towards the park, because on Sumatra you have to physically go to the offices and talk face to face with people to get anything done. It's a long road both literally and figuratively, but it's a good way to see this seldom-visited corner of the Earth.
With the elephants (again)
Monkeying around with elephants
The next stop on the journey was the Forestry Ministry's
elephant center in Seblat, which is run by my friend Yanti. Yanti is a veterinarian for the office of
natural resource management in Bengkulu province, and she agreed to accompany
me to some villages in the area.
Whenever I talk to Yanti I'm always amazed at the amount of
responsibility she has; in addition to managing the elephant camp she also has
a project on Enggano, a large island off the coast of Sumatra,
and she is on call 24-7 to treat animals like tigers and bears that get caught
in traps and need emergency surgery.
After about 3 hours on the road I arrived at the elephant camp, parked
my bike, and took one of the camp's dugout canoes across the Seblat river. I was happy to see my friend and all the
mahouts, who are a pretty jolly bunch.
There were also a number of volunteers from several western countries
under a program sponsored by the Dejavato Foundation, which is based in Surabaya and offers foreigners the opportunity to do volunteer tourism in Indonesia. The participants told me that this particular trip cost 180 euros for two weeks, and during that time they get training from the mahouts and help care for the elephants. It seems like a really good deal for an opportunity most people will never have. Plus they get exposure to elephants that would never be allowed in "developed" countries. If you want to learn more about Dejavato and their programs, visit their site here.
Trematode egg
In exchange for helping me Yanti cajoled me into doing some
work at the camp, which including analyzing elephant poop for parasites. So after a crash course on the types of
organisms that sometimes inhabit the bowels of large pachyderms, I set to work
making slides and examining them under a microscope. Most of the elephants were "clean",
but we did find that one has some "passengers", the eggs of which you
can see in the photo to the left. Over
the course of two days we visited a couple of villages and some park personnel
that are stationed at the post in Seblat.
One of the villages we visited was some distance away, located about 15
kilometers off the main road and accessible via dirt and gravel roads. We had to pass through a palm oil plantation
to get there, so it was a neat chance to see the facilities. We had a good time chatting with the village
head, who was quite a character. He
asked me to ask the park to move the border markers of the park a kilometer or
so further away from the village, which entertained me because he assumed I had
the type of influence that could get hundreds of hectares of protected land
degazetted.
I had to break my personal rule of not driving after dark on
the way back. I don't like driving
through the countryside in the dark because visibility is limited, but on the
positive side you always know whether or not there is someone coming the other
way on a blind curve. But then about 2
hours into the 3 hour drive the sky opened up on us, and so I had to slow down. Still the rain felt like needles on my chest
as I drove, and to cap it all off the chain kept slipping off my bike until we
were only going about half a kilometer between refitting it. So there we were out in the middle of
nowhere, very tired, very wet, and very frustrated at being stuck with a long
way yet to go. At this point I was about
at my limits and I caught myself asking out loud "Why in the &%(@ am I
doing this?" Fortunately, though, I
was able to find a villager with some wrenches which I borrowed to make the
necessary adjustments to the back axle and get back on the road. It was a trying experience though.
Road Conditions
Seblat is about 3 hours south of Mukomuko city, which I
mentioned in the previous post. The road
is quite nice and there isn't too much traffic.
You'll pass through a few small towns and there's a gas station at Ipuh,
which is a larger market town. Other
than the beach and the oil palms there isn't too much of note, but when I was
in Bengkulu city I learned that there are the ruins of a British fort somewhere
on this stretch. I don't know exactly
where they are though. Take sunscreen or
wear sleeves because you'll spend a lot of time under the sun. The road is suitable for bicycling, and as I
mentioned in the previous post foreign tourists are occasionally seen making
the trip on bikes.
Watch your step...
After a couple of days at the elephant camp I again headed
south in the direction of Arga Makmur, the district capital of Bengkulu Utara
district, where I wanted to interview the district headman, talk to some people
at the regional planning office, and pick up some policy documents. The drive south from Seblat is quite nice
until you get to Ketahun and then it gets really bad really fast. There is a lot of coal in Bengkulu, and where
you have coal you have coal mining and coal trucks. The problem in Bengkulu and elsewhere in
Sumatra is that the trucks are generally overloaded, which puts a lot of stress
on the asphalt roads, which break into pieces, making for a very bumpy and slow
ride. Although people complain about the
problem, the government hasn't taken any real action to enforce the weight
restrictions or repair the road in many places.
As you can see from the picture to the left, there's another
danger along this stretch of "highway": huge chunks of the road
falling into the sea. Though people had
warned me that the road was "missing" in some places, I didn't quite
believe them. How could a road be
"missing"? But now I
know. The road is indeed missing. I tried to figure out how you would go about
repairing this kind of problem, and I guess the best way would be to build the
road further inland. Anyway, if you
happen to be on the road between Ketahun and Arga Makmur be careful because the
ground may give way beneath you and you might plummet into the ocean.
I went to Arga Makmur because I want to visit the district
headman, but to do so I first have to get a letter from one of the superfluous
bureaucratic entities, which takes time.
So I submitted my documentation and then left town, figuring I could
pass back through in a few days, pick up the letter, and then go to the
Bupati's office and the planning department.
In one of the villages I visited near the elephant camp I met a guy who
runs a local NGO and is also a reporter for the local paper. Coincidentally he lives in Arga Makmur and
has inside connections and said he would help me with the visits, but I had to
get the letter first.
Road Conditions
It takes between 2 and 3 hours to get to Arga Makmur from
Seblat, and the road is pretty bad in some places. There are a lot of coal trucks, which move
slowly and kick up a lot of dirt, so it's not a really relaxing road. At Lais you turn off the main road to get to
Arga Makmur, about 45 minutes. I don't
know if there is any touristy reason to go to Arga Makmur, so you might want to
continue on to Bengkulu city if you make the trip.
Onward to Bengkulu....
Bengkulu is the capital of the province with the same
name. It gets some, but not a whole lot
of visitors, which is a shame because it's a neat place. You can visit the home of Indonesia's
first president (also one of the most revered heroes of the independence
struggle) Sukarno, where he stayed when he was under house arrest by the Dutch. There's an old British fort there (which I'll
describe in a moment), and there's also some fairly decent surf as it's on the
coast. When I first rolled into town I
needed to find a place to stay since there's no park office and all my friends
in town stay in boarding houses. As I
was cruising around the town I saw the building in the picture to the right. I've been around a bit but I rarely see
anything that physically stuns me. The Grand Canyon is one example. This building is another. When I drove around the corner and saw it I
had to stop. I don't know if you can
grasp the level of weirdness from this picture, but this building is odd. It turned out to be a hotel, and so naturally
I wanted to stay there. I rolled into
the front desk and had the following conversation with the clerk:
Me: "Man this
place is great. How much is a
room?"
Clerk: "400,000 rupiah (about US$42) for a standard
room...."
Me: "400,000
rupiah?!?!? But this place looks like it
was built out of garbage!"
Clerk: "There's another hotel down the road..."
Me: "Well can I
at least go up to the tower and look around?"
The clerk graciously called a bellhop to take me up to the
tower, which turned out to be an abandoned restaurant. Evidently it was a pretty swanky place back in
the 70s and 80s, but it's pretty rundown now.
I'm actually surprised that they let me go up there. I took a bunch of pictures and the bellhop
made a pass at me, and so I made haste for the exit. One of my friends would later tell me that
the tower used to rotate, but I have a really hard time believing that.
After I found more reasonable priced accommodations I went
to Fort Marlioborough, which was the center of
the British colonial government from 1714 to 1741. Though the British were the first colonial
power in Bengkulu, they would later trade this colony to the Dutch for Singapore and Malacca in Malaysia. The fort is quite nice and the government has
done a good job of maintaining it and putting up interpretive materials. I paid the 2,500 rupiah (about 27 cents) to
go in and was greeted by a very enthusiastic young lady who turned out to be a
student at one of the local practical high schools. She was studying to be a tour guide, and
wanted to practice with me. I was really
impressed with her knowledge of the history of the fort and had a good time
overall. It definitely is worth a visit.
My friend Yanti from the elephant camp was also in Bengkulu,
where she is officially based, to take care of a tiger that had been caught in
a trap. She invited me over to the
Bureau of Natural Resources to see the creature. When we went to the holding area outside the
back of the building the tiger saw me and immediately unleashed a roar that
made my hair stand on end. My tiger
expert friend in Sungai Penuh had described the roar of the Sumatran tiger to
me in the past, but you really have to experience it to understand it. From three meters away I was immediately as
scared as I've ever been in my life.
Then the tiger focused its gaze on me and I saw death in her eyes. I hope to God that I never run into one of
these in the forest. This particular
tiger will never be returned to the wild, as Yanti had to remove eight of her
toes. She'll probably be sent to the
Taman Safari zoo in Bogor
on Java, where they have several dozen tigers that have been caught in
traps.
After meeting with a couple of NGO folks and a reporter for
the national news service I headed out for Curup, which I'll describe in the
next post.
A couple of weeks ago the buzz around here was that two
village heads from the Serampas region (which I wrote about here, here, and here) were apprehended by the
Kerinci district police along the footpath that runs 20 kilometers from Renah
Kemumu village to Lempur town. The
village heads were arrested along with a middle-aged man (1) because they were
in possession of a tiger skin which had presumably been killed in Serampas and
which they allegedly had intended to sell.
I was a bit surprised and disappointed by this news, because one of the
suspects, the head of Renah Kemumu village, is a friend of mine and has on
occasion stopped by my house to hang out when he's in town. This incident, while unfortunate, is an all
too common occurrence in and around KerinciSeblatNational
Park, one of the last remaining habitats for the
critically endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera
tigris sumatrae).
Tigers used to be found on several Indonesian islands, but
since the extinction of the Bali tiger (1940s)
and the Javan tiger (1970s) the Sumatran tiger is the only one of the three
related subspecies remaining. Though the
range of the Sumatran tiger once included virtually the entire island, there
are only a few remaining habitats left, and all of those face a variety of
challenges that directly threaten the Sumatran tiger's continued
existence. The largest of these pockets
is Kerinci Seblat National Park (KSNP, Taman Nasional Kerinci Seblat, TNKS; at
1.38 million hectares or 5300 square miles the largest national park on Sumatra
and the second largest terrestrial protected area in all of Indonesia), where
I'm currently doing my doctoral dissertation research. These protected areas among the only
remaining large forested areas on Sumatra,
though just a few decades ago the island was essentially covered with
forest. Large-scale agricultural
conversion, land clearing for settlement, and industrial plantations have
eliminated huge swaths of habitat. Since
Sumatran tigers are for the most part solitary animals a significant amount of
space is required to maintain viable populations. Though the numbers vary, estimates as to the
range of an individual tiger's territory are as high as 100 square
kilometers. Estimates also vary widely
as to the current number of tigers, ranging from the low 300s to around 1000,
but even on the high end the Sumatran tiger is in trouble. This variability is because it is so hard to
estimate the number of tigers in a given area.
Most "censuses" use camera traps to photograph tigers in a
representative area, and then attempt to extrapolate the findings to a wider
habitat area. However models derived
from these methods make assumptions and are not able to take into consideration
all the myriad variables that affect tiger distribution.
Though habitat destruction is the main cause for the
dramatic decline in tiger numbers, tiger poaching is the main concern in Sumatra's protected areas. The nature of poaching makes it difficult to
gauge the scale of the problem; since all aspects of the tiger trade are
illegal there are no records kept.
Poaching is difficult to detect, and only in a few protected areas
(including KSNP) have authorities been able to build capacity to detect
poachers and tackle the problem. It used
to be that many poached tigers were taken to fill "orders" placed by
civil servants, most commonly policemen or members of the military or to be
used as gifts to or by politicians.
Folks desirous of promotions would use the tiger skins as gifts for
superiors as a way to "grease the wheels". A friend of mine doing police-related
research on Java once commented to me that (s)he was amazed at how often tiger
skins were to be found in the homes of high-ranking officials. It's been estimated that several decades ago,
80% of poached skins were for the domestic market and 20% were exported. Now, though, demand has shifted, and a source
close to the issue told me that it's likely that 80% of skins are
exported. Now the biggest destination
for skins and bone is said to be Vietnam, but this is difficult to
prove. Tiger skins move through a
network of brokers sometimes changing hands 5-6 times before they arrive at
their final destination. Investigators
are sometimes able to estimate the number of middlemen from the final price, as
each step entails a 10-20% "cut" for the broker. Those that have poached tigers previously
likely have established contacts and know the rules of the game, but
"novice" poachers can expect to make a lot less. Likewise, those without a direct line to
bone/skin "bosses" have to go through brokers, but they often have
unrealistically high expectations of the prices they can get. A friend that works in tiger protection told
me that end-market values for skin and bones that appear in media reports (for
instance, a newspaper story that reports the final price for a tiger skin at,
say, US$15,000) leads some would-be poachers to believe they can get close to
that for a tiger, but the reality is that the price gets inflated along the
extended chain of buying and selling.
This dynamic perhaps contributes to poaching. Although it is hard to say with any certainty
how much a poached tiger skin will bring (this depends on a lot of things; sex,
size, age, condition and the experience and knowledge of the market on the part
of the buyer), a villager may hope to net around US$1,000 for a skin plus
$300-350 more for the bones. This is, of
course negotiable, as some village poachers may be dependent on the middlemen
to find a buyer.
Boar snares (6). I lifted this photo without permission from
a flickr page associated with this site.
It's not just tiger skins that are valuable, though. Their bones and certain body parts are
believed by some to have medicinal or magic powers. At the export level bones and skins may be
marketed through a different network, though, and it is thought that nearly
100% are exported (2). Again it is
difficult to get precise information on the tiger trade since bones, skins, and
other parts are covered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) and so the trade is entirely illegal
and undercover, but it is suspected that some if not most of the trading is
coordinated by cartels based in Southeast Asia.
Snared tiger photo from here. When tigers get their
paws caught in snares the paw often must be
amputated. If the operation isn't done quickly enough
there is a high risk of infection which can lead to the
death of the tiger. Sometimes post-operation tigers
can be reintroduced into the wild, sometimes not.
Although poaching is a problem at KSNP, conservationists
have had a higher level of success when compared to other protected areas and
there is some basis for hope here. When
directed tiger enforcement began here, the park's administrators were not aware
of the scale of the problem, and so tiger conservation was not a priority. It was soon determined that tiger poaching
was indeed a prime concern, but since regular and routine patrols have begun
year by uear the percentage of patrols recording active snare poaching has
continued to decrease. Still in that
time that I've been working here (around 9 months) there have been more than 8
documented cases of tigers being killed or snared (3). Though some tigers are killed by villagers as
the result of tiger attacks (4), it is known that several have been poached
over the past year. Specialist forest
police patrolling the park still on occasion encounter tiger snares, which
indicates that poaching is for the most part done with intent rather than by
opportunistic villagers. Again,
estimates vary widely regarding the number of tigers in the park; the local
paper just last week printed a story indicating 166 tigers remain, but other
experts suggest there could be twice that many.
But if you consider that possibly 5% of the extant population has been
lost over the past year alone (this is probably a low-end estimate given that
there are likely tigers poached/killed without being discovered/reported), it
is clear that the Sumatran tiger is facing a hard struggle for survival.
As I've mentioned in the past, it's my responsibility as a
researcher to maintain neutrality on pretty much all the issues I'm
investigating. I understand the concerns
of conservationists, many from "developed" countries who lament the
loss of creatures like the Sumatran tiger.
However, I also hear stories from villagers who see, with reason,
wildlife as a threat to their way of life.
Their encounters with wildlife like tigers and elephants are generally
confrontational in nature (5). I find it
impossible to maintain neutrality when discussing poaching, though. There is no way it can be justified. I also get a little sad when I imagine myself
telling my children "we used to have these things called tigers...."
Notes
(1) Who is being charged as the actual poacher
(2) There are a couple of minor exceptions to this. Certain body parts, like whiskers, are for
the domestic market.
(3) This figure does
not include incidence happening just outside the park in protection forests
(hutan lindung)
(4) Most of these
attacks occur in places where humans have encroached in tiger habitat or where
there has been very heavy poaching of tiger prey species. In/around KSNP there have been only 3
documented attacks on people since 2008.
In one case that I am aware of, an illegal logger was attacked by a
tiger deep within the national park. In
another recent case a villager claimed that a tiger attacked him but the
investigation showed that this was not the case.
(5) Again, the fact
is that most conflict is due to habitat destruction.
(6) The snares in the photo are actually neck snares, but tigers sometimes get caught in them. Poachers prefer foot hold snares because neck snares can damage the skin.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my friends that work hard in the field and put themselves in danger to protect tigers, mitigate human/wildlife conflicts, and increase awareness.
