‘Extremely positive’: Tiger numbers bouncing back in Thailand’s deep wild west

KAMPHAENG PHET, Thailand: A footprint and a pile of animal scat is the spark that sets a group of rangers on a special trek through a vast forest complex in Thailand’s deep west.

National park personnel and researchers have traversed undulating dirt trails through thick and dry evergreen forest, home to black bears, elephants, tapirs and pheasants.

While all animal activity is of interest, this is primarily a tiger hunt - one designed to save the big cat. 

The traps being laid out here - in Mae Wong national park some 360km northwest of Bangkok - are of the camera variety only.

The small team piled into two 4x4s pulls up to a salt lick in a small clearing, encircled by thick foliage. The artificially created mud bath has become a busy fauna junction in this part of the park for an array of animals seeking essential minerals. 

Distinct markings of a large feline paw in the soft soil - and various scat nearby - is evidence that both predator and prey have been using the lick. 

Around the trunk of an uprooted tree is a chain, attached to a metal box that houses an infrared camera.  An elephant probably got curious about the light coming from the device and knocked down the tree, one researcher surmised. 

Contained within it though, the officers still hope to find more proof of wildlife flocking here. Today, they are in luck. 

Standing in the middle of the forest on his laptop, Teerawut Kaewsrisod, a research coordinator from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) scans through automatically-detected video footage of various animals coming to feed.

Over years now of detection and monitoring like this, researchers have revealed that the tiger, a king of the jungle, is making a comeback here. 

APEX PREDATORS ON THE RISE

While tigers have seen their population numbers decimated across the globe and their natural territories encroached on and converted, across Thailand’s vast protected forest areas in the country's west and northwestern regions, the story is different.

From 2007 to 2023, the estimated number of wild tigers roaming the kingdom’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM), a critical biodiversity complex encompassing 11 national parks and six wildlife sanctuaries, has more than tripled.

The 18,730 sq km complex stretching along Thailand’s border with Myanmar, the largest forest track in mainland Southeast Asia, now has 143 tigers, based on a study by the Department of National Parks and the Wildlife Conservation Society released last year.

That contrasts with the global picture - where the species is listed as endangered and has declined in number by about 97 per cent over the last century - down to only around 3,200 animals in 2010. 

That number rebounded to an estimated 5,574 in the wild in 2023, but tigers generally are facing multiple pressures threatening their viability in the wild.

“They only inhabit around 7 per cent of the land area that they once lived in,” said Alex McWilliam, regional coordinator for species and habitats at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Those include hunting, poaching, depletion of prey, infectious diseases and habitat loss and fragmentation. Overall, tigers coming closer into contact with humans can be “very negative”, McWilliam said.

While numbers have been rebounding slowly in countries such as India and Nepal, they have largely been declining in Southeast Asia, making success in the WEFCOM conservation area critical for the conservation of the species.

“Just the number, the increase in the number of tigers, is a very important measure of how successful our actions have been to conserve tigers,” he said. 

In Mae Wong, an area that only received official protection status in 1987, with its landscape rehabilitated in the years since then, there are now nine known tigers.  

While that may still seem low, it is already a remarkable success, said the park’s chief, Khomsan Maneekarn.

“Back then, there wasn’t much wildlife and it was hard to find it.  After the rehabilitation, these forests have become a place of hope for the wildlife, not just the tigers,” he said.

Overall in Thailand, there were an estimated 179 to 223 adult tigers in the wild, the Department of National Parks reported. WEFCOM could potentially support up to 2,000 tigers given the right protection, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

They are apex predators of their domain and an umbrella species, meaning when they thrive, the rest of the local ecosystem is likely also in good health.

The benefits to humans are clear as well. Tiger conservation efforts can improve economic security for local populations, strengthen food and water systems and empower communities, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“If you can preserve them, if you can maintain them within your landscape, you're doing pretty well," said Regan Pairojmahakij, the climate change programme lead at the Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific, a nonprofit organisation focusing on community forestry in Asia.

"It's an incredible opportunity, and I think at least in this country, it has been largely capitalised on."

A VERY TOUGH BUSINESS

Central to efforts from the Thai government, the Department of National Parks and various civil society groups has been a holistic and long-term approach to environmental management.

Thailand has prioritised gazetting large areas of land for protection. At Mae Wong, it has incorporated focused research, species population monitoring, smart patrols and local information campaigns to involve local communities in the efforts.

Simply having data and proper scientific monitoring has allowed experts to finally better understand the status and needs of not only tigers but the entire food chain and the supporting ecosystem.

Previous efforts to track tigers in the WEFCOM area earlier this century yielded ad-hoc results but prompted the Thai government to intensify its tiger protection and monitoring efforts. 

As these initiatives began to pay off, density rates in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary within the complex were shown to be as high as any in Southeast Asia, but still far behind what had been achieved in India and Nepal over a longer period of rehabilitation. 

Further intensification of law enforcement and habitat management followed, and the Department of National Parks reported in 2022 that no instances of active tiger poaching had been detected since 2013.

“Conservation in general is a very tough business and when there are successes, I think those successes should be celebrated. And certainly, in Thailand, the situation for tiger conservation in some areas is extremely positive,” McWilliam said.

While tiger numbers are increasing, critically, so too are the numbers of other hoofed animals like deer and banteng, the prey for big cats. One recent study found that their numbers have doubled within a sanctuary inside the complex, which directly enhances the ability of tigers to thrive.

As an extra step to speed up the population increase of prey fauna, work has already begun on the dedicated off-site breeding of particular species, which will then be released into the wild.

“If we wait for them to rehabilitate naturally it’s quite slow and too slow for the tigers in the area. So, we want to help by making arrangements with breeding centres to release them here,” Teerawut said.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Despite these successes, there remain friction points in the environment. 

Dynamics between wild apex predators and communities in forest areas are precarious and will need to be carefully managed going forward, Pairojmahakij said. The constant pressures around land tenure and use are also factors weighing on the tiger’s future.

Tigers are mostly travelling through non-protected land, meaning there needs to be buy-in from local communities and landowners to ensure their protection and incentives to manage nature in a way that supports food chains, she argued.

Protected areas and complexes in Thailand are typically surrounded by community forest, community-managed land, private land holdings or agrarian reform lands. Right now, there are few incentives for biodiversity conservation in those places.

“Maybe you do need, in some cases, a kind of a core protected area for certain species. Tigers are one of them that do not happily coexist with people,” she said.

“But then you have the surrounding buffer areas, and whatever benefits associated with biodiversity conservation are, they must be shared and disseminated and made accessible to local communities.”

The transboundary nature of the ways tigers behave, and the proximity of their natural habitat in the WEFCOM complex to Myanmar, embroiled in a prolonged armed conflict, presents a unique set of challenges that may seem difficult to overcome in the short term.

Trying to build sustainable landscape management systems on the other side of the border is also a really critical piece of the broader puzzle, she explained.

“Thailand obviously does not exist in a bubble. Myanmar is right next door. Borders are porous. And the tigers don't hold passports.”

Luckily, the notion of protecting tigers has proven effective for drawing much-needed financing for conservation to the region. There are few species that can draw attention like a tiger in plight, she said.

“There's very few iconic species or issues quite as compelling as tiger conservation. So it's incredibly powerful. There needs to be a problem as a catalytic point to bring stakeholders together. It's the most beautiful kind of entry point,” she said.

Close to the salt lick in Mae Wong, the park researchers get set to re-install another camera trap, again tied to a tree likely knocked down by an elephant.

They set the camera’s lens on a nearby stump, a “scratching pole” for the various mammals wandering along this trail. 

A pile of bones just metres from the tree - prey devoured at some point in the recent past - is a warning sign about the dangers of the predators finding new ways to thrive in this jungle patch. 

Eventually, officials here are aiming for a total of 15 tigers. If the landscape can support them, it means the rest of their efforts are working. 

“Tigers don’t belong to one individual in Thailand, they belong to everyone,” Teerawut said. “To see tigers in Thailand, to see them walk in Thai forests, is something to be proud of.”

The tiger is alive here. And for the sake of the entire forest, that being true is a sign that nature is finding its way back to balance.

Additional reporting by Ryn Jirenuwat.