Saturday July 29 is Global Tiger Day and we are pleased to share some updates from WWF-Malaysia, who we work with to provide the funding from our Tiger Conservation Memberships.
WWF-Malaysia’s tiger conservation work in Royal Belum State Park is designed to reduce threats towards tigers and other wildlife living within the same landscape and is comprised of several components. WWF-Malaysia hires Tiger Patrol Units, consisting of 5 people each and all of these patrol team members come from the local indigenous communities. The units are trained to patrol and collect data on poaching independently. Each unit patrols for two weeks every month to find and remove snares and other poaching threats. The information collected is then channelled to enforcement agencies for further action.
The work of the Patrol Units has seen a 90% decline in active snares and in 2022 no active snares were located.
Recently, Royal Belum State Park received Conservation Assured Tiger Standards (CA|TS) accreditation – the first region in Southeast Asia to do so. CA|TS is an accreditation scheme that encourages tiger conservation areas to meet a set of standards and criteria, created by an international group of experts and protected area managers, which assures effective and long-term tiger conservation. The long-term goal of CA|TS is to ensure safe havens for Tigers.
Tiger research
WWF-Malaysia has a team of field biologists and indigenous field assistants to carry out monitoring of the tiger population through the use of camera traps. Since tigers have unique stripes, they can be identified through photographs of their flanks. Thus, we can effectively count the number of tigers from camera-trapping surveys, to monitor how tigers are doing and measure our conservation success.
The Club is dedicated to helping to save wild tigers from extinction and are proud that a group of our coterie members are now in the third year of funding a Tiger Patrol Unit. We are also pleased to have seen a number of our supporters sign up for a tiger conservation membership, where the funds go directly to employing staff for a Tiger Patrol Unit in Malaysia.
This year we are aiming to reach 660 members, with us currently on 389. To sign up as a tiger conservation member, please visit Richmond FC | TIGER CONSERVATION
