‘Smart patrols’: The new hope for Malaysia’s last tigers

Shah Redza raises his voice over the noise of the motor powering our small taxi-boat into the jungle. “Any messages?” he shouts. “This is the last two minutes we’ll have phone connection.” From a green hut on a slope to the left of us, a soldier waves from an army checkpoint. Around it is rainforest so thick you can barely see a metre inside.

We are deep in the north of Malaysia, near its border with Thailand, a five-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur, and Redza, a snowy-haired Perak state official, is leading us into the heart of Royal Belum State Park. There are no roads into or inside Belum, a vast area of protected territory 1.6 times the size of Singapore. The only way in is via a network of waterways, which you need a permit to travel on – and even they will only take you so far. Beyond that, the singular mode of transport, through tens of thousands of hectares of undulating wilderness, is on foot.

One of the oldest rainforests on the planet, Belum is believed to date back 130 million years, longer than the Amazon and the Congo basin. It is also south-east Asia’s most biodiverse in terms of species to landmass, home to elephants, panthers, gaur and 10 types of hornbills.

We are here, though, because Belum is ground zero in the battle to save the country’s national animal –the tiger – from extinction. The Malayan tiger, one of six subspecies of tigers worldwide, is such an icon in Malaysia that two of them feature on the country’s coat of arms. The national football team is known as Harimau Malaya, adopting the Malay name for the tiger. Very similar in appearance to the northern Indochinese tiger, the Malayan tiger is smaller than its Bengal and Siberian counterparts, with males growing up to 150 kilograms and females to 130 kilograms.

Like other tigers, they are ambush predators, using astonishing eyesight in the dark to hunt early in the morning and at night, particularly around water sources. Apart from the first two years of their lives, when as cubs they stick close to their mother, tigers are basically solitary creatures, roaming mostly within their own territory except when breeding. The oldest adults recorded have lived for more than 10 years while experts believe they can live to as old as 15, perhaps 20.

In the 1950s, there were as many as 3000 found on the Malay Peninsula and just over the border in Thailand’s Bang Lang National Park. However, with poaching having decimated the population, there are now estimated to be less than 200 remaining in the wild, as well as fewer than 10 in captivity, prompting grim warnings that the tiger will soon die out.

“At this figure, it is estimated the species will be entirely extinct within a period of five to 10 years if drastic extraordinary action is not taken immediately,” Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, a senior government minister, told Malaysia’s parliament in November.

It was a forecast Redza did not need to hear. A trained economist who has devoted much of his working life to conservation, the 59-year-old was well aware of the urgency of the tiger’s plight when he took over three years ago as director of Perak State Parks Corporation, placing him in charge of huge swathes of parkland across north-west Malaysia.

Searching for a way to safeguard the future of the critically endangered tiger at Belum, he has looked inside the forest to another of its long-time occupants. Villagers from the Jahai tribe, one of Malaysia’s 18 indigenous Orang Asli groups, have been living there as nomadic, forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers for generations – and know the dense landscape better than anyone. They are descendants of the first humans on the Malaysian Peninsula – dating back 50,000 years – and in the past, have often been paid by outsiders for odd jobs such as working as porters. But, recognising the value of their local knowledge and close affinity with the jungle, Redza, in a joint initiative with Rimau, the Tiger Protection Society of Malaysia, has begun training and employing them as rangers.

Ten men were initially signed up in 2019 from Tan Haim, a tiny, primitive village comprising 20 families, which is a 45-minute boat trip into Belum. That number of men grew to 20 last year and now a further 10 are in training at another small settlement along the river. Called Menraq, which means “people” in the Jahai language, the patrollers are unarmed and report the presence of wildlife hunters rather than confront them. But they are quickly emerging as key assets in the anti-poaching effort, joining rangers in the rainforest from the state park authority and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

Shah Redza has devoted much of his working life to conservation, and was well aware of the urgency of the tiger’s plight when he took over three years ago as director of Perak State Parks Corporation. Credit: Farhan Iqbal

“They play a critical role, because by being present you discourage people from coming in,” Redza says as we press further into the forest, rounding bend after bend en route to their training site. “For poachers to be effective, they have to stay long-term … a minimum of a month or two, setting their traps. But it’s just not worth it if you spend two months here putting traps in every day and every other day your traps are destroyed and you catch nothing.”

When our boat eventually snakes its way to their riverside camp, the Menraq and their new recruits have barely slept for two days. The Jahai believe in the supernatural and through knowledge of their tribe’s history, they report that an Orang Asli man died in this location many years before. At night, the spirit of the deceased tribesman has been appearing at the camp, they say. “They’ve seen the person walking,” says Tang Fook Leong, a trainer with Rimau.

Aged between 18 and 48, the fresh intake is learning tracking techniques with GPS, how to read maps, as well as how to collect data on everything from tiger tracks and hornbill nests to signs of encroachment. They will train for two months before beginning “smart patrols” lasting 15 days at a time, during which they will cover 10 square kilometres with 30-kilogram packs on their back.

“This is our world,” says Roni, a 42-year-old from Tan Haim who was the first member of the Menraq and is now one of its leaders. Flanked by his fellow patrol members and trainees, in front of one of the handful of gazebos that make up the camp, he describes the poachers as “ghosts”. “The poachers come like tourists but they will just disappear into the forest,” he says. “They always come in the night. We hear people inside the forest. We are angry that poachers come here but we cannot fight them, so we are doing it in a legal way.”

Roni was the first of the Indigenous patrollers in Royal Belum.Credit: Farhan Iqbal

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At 117,500 hectares, Royal Belum’s size is both a blessing and a curse. It offers a good-sized habitat for the tigers but the activities of intruders are difficult to police. The winding two-lane highway which runs east-west below its southern boundary is a notorious smuggling route from Thailand, and has numerous points from which to enter the extensive forest that connects to the protected area. There are very few people around; the nearest town, Gerik, is a 45-minute drive west. Poachers have also been known to disembark from the few dozen houseboats that are given permits to enter Belum, slipping into the forest with wire snares for capturing wildlife, and sometimes a handmade shotgun for self-defence.

Wildlife trafficking is the fourth-largest illegal trade in the world, according to the WWF – behind drugs, people-smuggling and counterfeiting – and is worth nearly $US19 billion ($25 billion) annually. In Malaysia, the tiger is the jackpot. They are coveted for everything from their bones, which are ground to powder for traditional Chinese medicine, to their whiskers, which are made into high-value acupuncture needles; one animal’s parts can fetch as much as $US80,000 (more than $110,000) on the black market.

The WWF reports that an average of 53,000 snares are removed each year from 11 protected areas in five south-east Asian nations including Malaysia.

The pursuit of the poachers is a well-oiled operation. “People think that just because they’re poachers, they come by foot across the mountains with their backpacks,” Redza says. “No, that’s so far away. They come in because they have a syndicate behind them. All their weapons and traps are based in Malaysia and they come in as tourists or as workers with legal working permits.”

While the tiger is the most sought-after prize, the traps are indiscriminate.

“They snare everything … pangolins, panthers, even elephants,” Redza says. “So what’s happened is it has decreased the amount of food available for the tigers. All the sambar deer, barking deer, wild pigs are being snared. Once you disturb the food chain, you disturb the tiger itself.”

At the height of a torrent of poaching in 2016 and 2017, the WWF recorded 218 snares in Belum alone, believed to have been set by Indochinese syndicates. The WWF reports that an average of 53,000 snares are removed each year from 11 protected areas in five south-east Asian nations including Malaysia. Millions more are estimated to be laid.

Even more alarming were the results in early 2020 of a three-year national survey of tigers, which used thousands of hidden cameras placed in forests around the country to identify the animals individually. Belum’s tiger population was found to have more than halved in less than a decade, plummeting from 60 to just 23.

It’s a trend reflected across Malaysia, where tigers live as far south as Johor, the state that borders Singapore. Habitat loss, including from illegal logging, is also a major contributing factor to the steep decline in non-protected areas. However, poaching, of both the tigers and their prey, such as the samba deer, is the number-one threat, according to Rimau, reducing numbers to a point where there may eventually be too few tigers to reproduce.

In Belum’s Tan Haim village, Rimau – the Tiger Protection Society of Malaysia – provides training to locals and employs them as rangers. Credit: Rimau

The Malaysian government reacted last year by appointing 600 army veterans as rangers to prop up patrolling resources in non-protected areas and national parks, while upping the maximum penalties for poaching to 1 million ringgit ($330,000) and 15 years’ jail. The extra eyes were useful; last November, Malaysia’s Wildlife and National Parks Department announced it had arrested 127 people for poaching activity during 2021, seizing wildlife and other items valued at $10.5 million.

Now, after years of urging by the WWF, Royal Malaysia Police has also responded to the tigers’ predicament by foreshadowing the setting-up of its own wildlife crime bureau. The international NGO credits the establishment of similar operations in India and Nepal with helping to gradually increase those countries’ tiger populations. In India, where the tiger is also the national animal, there were nearly 3000 tigers recorded in the wild during the Modi government’s last tiger survey in 2018, up from 1400 in 2004.

In 2021, the Malaysian government increased the maximum penalties for poaching to 1 million ringgit ($330,000) and 15 years’ jail.Credit:

China, Bhutan and Russia have also restored tiger populations in recent years, although success stories haven’t been without tragic side-effects. Tiger attacks on humans are on the rise in India, with 320 people killed between 2014 and 2020. Attacks are also increasing in Nepal. Such incidents are far less frequent in Malaysia, although the country has not been immune to them despite its dwindling tiger numbers.

A tiger, nicknamed Scarface, killed four people on rubber and palm oil plantations in the north-east Kelantan state in 2006, while the most recent attack was in January, with rangers in Kelantan shooting a tiger dead after it mauled a 59-year-old villager to death.

“We don’t have that many people living in the jungle,” says Rimau president and documentary filmmaker, Harun Rahman, who is guiding us through Belum with Redza. What is important for us here is we don’t give the animals a reason to actually come out. Most of the time they come out only if there is poaching going on or illegal logging.”

The Jahai inside Belum are aware of the dangers of sharing their world with tigers. It’s one of the reasons they don’t keep livestock and why, when the government once gifted one of the villages a herd of goats to tend to, they slaughtered and ate them instead.

More Belum locals are being trained to detect and report poachers.Credit: Farhan Iqbal

At Tan Haim, the village from which the first wave of Jahai were hired to scour Belum, the extra attention on defending the tiger is welcome. The village lies above the riverbank, another 30-minute boat ride through Belum from the training camp. When we arrive, Mak, the head of the village, greets us in front of its bamboo and straw-roofed huts. “The tiger is very important in our tradition,” Mak says. “The poachers have come here and have stolen the gaur, the deer, the tiger, everything. This is our forefathers’ land. We need to look after it.”

The Menraq each receive, on average, 80 ringgit (about $26) a day when they are on patrol, far in excess of what they would earn harvesting produce from the forest or working as a porter. And for every day they are working, each member receives 10 ringgit for their village. The children have also been involved in the placement and management of the 400 cameras inside Belum, while some of the women collect seeds as part of a local reforestation scheme.

Village head Mak has embraced the project: “The tiger is very important in our tradition. This is our forefathers’ land. We need to look after it.”Credit: Farhan Iqbal

“The head man was asking me, ‘Do you want some more guys?’ because the more youth who are working as Menraq, the more the village makes,” Redza says. “Among the young boys, the 10-year-olds, they are looking up to these Menraq rangers, saying, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a Menraq.’ They are bringing money to their family, bringing money to the village, and doing very important work.”

Education, too, has emerged as an important plank of the tie-up forged to protect the tiger in Belum. Most of the Menraq are illiterate, and access to education is expensive, with a trip to town costing as much as 200 ringgit (about $65) by boat and then car. This is more than they can afford, making external learning impractical. Now, however, they are taking writing classes and being taught basic financial literacy. Last November, a Rimau team took them to Gerik so they could open bank accounts.

“They can’t read and write, so we’re trying to teach them how to use a bank and how to save their money,” Rahman says. “Financial literacy is this huge thing of which they have no concept. Their thinking around money is: ‘I get money, I spend it and when it’s finished, I just go to the jungle and get what I need’.”

Jahai children help with the placement and collection of cameras set to monitor wildlife and poaching.Credit: Rimau

At Tan Haim, there is now a preschool classroom, and Redza arranges for teachers to come once a week to train some of the villagers to become educators. Roni, the forest patrol leader, was the first. The classroom has since been damaged by floods and all the books and writing materials destroyed, and Redza is busy trying to replace them. The state covers only 2 million of the 8 million ringgit ($2.6 million) needed to run Belum; this is topped up by WWF and other foundations, but the shortfall is always nerve-wracking.

“I came here and they said, ‘Boss, we want our kids to learn,’ ” Redza says. “I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and they said, ‘Come back in two weeks.’ So I came back in two weeks and they had built a hut. ‘This is our school, please help us.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s commitment.’ ”

In late 2020, an adult female and three cubs were spotted by cameras in the Belum-Temengor forest, and the following year, two more cubs were seen.Credit: WWF

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In late 2020, images of three tiger cubs trailing an adult female tiger were snapped on cameras set up by the WWF inside the Belum-Temengor complex, which takes in a mass of jungle below the protected park and is the largest slice of continuous forest in Peninsula Malaysia. The same four tigers were picked up by another camera a month later. Then, last year, two further cubs were seen on camera in Belum. The sighting of five additional tigers was heartening for the conservation community, which in 2019, mourned the death of Malaysia’s last remaining Sumatran rhinoceros on Borneo.

The initial indications from the association between Perak State Parks Corporation, Rimau and the Orang Asli have also been promising. The number of traps found since the Jahai were brought on as rangers has dropped dramatically. In 2020, there were only five discovered, of which just two were active.

“Those [poachers] who went in were caught within three days,” Redza says. “We had a few encroachments and all of them were caught. Now if you go into Royal Belum, if you are undetected for two weeks you are damn good. But our criteria for success is not when you catch people. When you catch people it’s already too late. They’ve already been in; they’ve already probably set some traps. Our success is when you find no signs of encroachment, let alone traps.”

As encouraging as the signs have been, however, there is a wariness about the numbers. The roadblocks and border restrictions that were introduced as a
result of the COVID-19 pandemic, have made access to Belum far more difficult. The concern is that the poachers will return as Malaysia begins to open up.

“I think at the moment we’re getting a false sense of success because of COVID,” Rahman says. “Because of the closedown we think, ‘Oh, we’re doing a good job.’ I think we need to wait another year or two before we can actually say this is really a success. The past two years have been very kind to us in a way, because we had time to train, we had time to work out the teething problems. The next year is going to be the crunch.”

“You talk about endangered mountain gorillas … but there are still 700 to 800 of them.”

Beyond the anti-poaching drive, conservationists in Malaysia have, for years, been lobbying for the peninsula’s four major forest complexes – which cover 5 million hectares across eight states – to be linked. While tigers are now scattered around the country in small groups, those pushing the concept have visions of an interconnected central forest spine which tigers and other wildlife could inhabit.

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who chairs the country’s National Tiger Conservation Task Force, announced in January that authorities had agreed to enhance forest cover on the peninsula from 43 per cent to 50 per cent by 2040, as part of a range of measures aimed at saving the tiger from extinction.

The question is whether or not it will be too late. Because they are protected areas, Redza sees Belum and Taman Negara National Park, another huge forest in central peninsular Malaysia with a high concentration of tigers, as becoming key breeding hubs in the species’ recovery. For that to materialise, though, the tiger count must first avoid falling below a level that is viable for repopulation, as was the fate of the Javan and Balinese tigers, which became extinct in the second half of the 20th century.

Tiger experts do not identify an exact number as the point of no return because it is dependent on the genetic quality of those left, but the view in the scientific community in Malaysia is that there must be at least 25 breeding or adult females across the country to keep the species alive. The good news is that the tigers breed well. The bad news, Rahman says, is that if their main source of food, the deer, continues to be poached, they will have to spend more time hunting – and this means less time for breeding. As for increasing the population in captivity, there have been breeding successes, but the cubs can’t be released into the wild because they haven’t been taught how to hunt.

“You know, you talk about endangered mountain gorillas … but there are still 700 to 800 of them,” says Redza, who is preparing an application for Royal Belum to be given UNESCO World Heritage status. “You talk about the very rare [north Sumatran] Tapanuli orangutan. There are still 400 of them. This is less than 200, probably 170 to 180. Once they go, they go forever.”

That sense of finality lingers as our boat sets off from Tan Haim village, and we head out of Belum. We pass scores of dead trees protruding from the water, relics of deep valleys flooded decades ago following the construction of the Temengor Dam to the south.

As the soldier at the army checkpoint waves at us again and our phone reception returns, we are left to contemplate another concerning prospect. Redza is eager to continue the work he has begun with the Jahai and in the other parks he oversees in Perak state, but he is nearly 60, the mandatory age for retirement in Malaysia’s civil service. For the sake of the Malayan tiger, one can only hope he is granted an exemption.

Our journey into Belum has shown us there is still a chance to salvage the future of this magnificent animal with people like Redza and the Jahai on the case. It’s also shown us what a crying shame it would be if that opportunity was lost.

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