Sunda Tiger

Protecting the places where tigers live and breed is the backbone of TX2, an effort to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. WWF works to protect these important sites that are—or have the potential to become—breeding grounds, allowing tigers to disperse across larger landscapes, which we call “heartlands.” Sumatra is home to five of those heartlands both in Central and South Sumatra. It is only through the successful protection of these heartlands that Asia will be able to double its tiger population.

WWF is also working to save one of the last great stands of rain forest in Thirty Hills, or Bukit Tigapuluh, in Central Sumatra. In August 2015, WWF-Indonesia received licenses to manage about 100,000 acres of forests bordering Bukit Tigapuluh National Park that been originally earmarked for logging concessions. Together with Frankfurt Zoological Society and The Orangutan Project, WWF is working through a newly formed concession company that will focus on restoring parts of the concession that have been deforested, setting aside some parts for income generation to benefit local and indigenous communities and support the forestry operations—all while protecting the majority of forest that is home to tigers, orangutans, and Asian elephants.

WWF is undertaking groundbreaking research on tigers in central Sumatra. Using camera traps to estimate population size and distribution as well as habitat use, we identify wildlife corridors that require protection across the central Sunda tiger landscape.