|
Back to Bengkulu Sumatra or
Regions |
|
Bengkulu
Sumatra |
|
Bukit Barisan Selatan National
Park |
|
Up • Introduction • Sumatran Tigers • Mammals, Reptiles |
|
Sumatran Tigers |
Barisan Selatan National Park comprises of 365,000
hectares of forest in the Bukit Barisan Mountains. Sumatran tigers, the
Malayan tapir, elephant, Sumatran serow, siamang, agile gibbons, clouded
leopards, wild dogs, reticulated pythons, water monitors, squirrels the size
of large cats, a rare viable population of Sumatran rhinoceros; these are just
a handful of the animals found here.
It is estimated that 9-13 males and 18-22 females live within Barisan Selatan
National Park, but these have fragmented into five small groups. Fortunately
their distance from one another is not so great that the groups cannot
interact, and the habitat between them is quite suitable for tigers.
This National Park has major poaching problems. In the period between
1998-2000 sixty-six Sumatran tigers were killed; this is nearly 20 percent of
the total Sumatran tiger population -- and 24 of them came from Bukit Barisan
Selatan.
In an effort to control the problem, anti-poaching squads have been set up at
Barisan Selatan, Way Kambas and Kerinci Seblat National Parks; these consist
of a villager and three forestry officers. Very few arrests are ever made as
the patrols fear retaliation, evidence is difficult to collect, and those few
cases that make it to court receive light sentences on an equivalent with
chicken stealing.
Clearing for agricultural use and illegal logging is steadily eating into park
boundaries. Remote sensing is being used to establish when there will no
longer be enough habitat to sustain tigers, rhinos, or tapirs. Already
satellite imagery has shown tigers are being forced into much smaller areas.
|
|
Up • Introduction • Sumatran Tigers • Mammals, Reptiles |
|
|
|
