Learn from India before Malayan tiger falls silent

THE recent Economist Today feature on India's wildlife success carries an uncomfortable message for Malaysia: a country can save its great animals, but only if it decides that protection is more than a policy statement.

India's growing encounters with tigers, leopards and elephants are often tragic.

Yet, as The Economist points out, they are also evidence of a striking conservation achievement; wild animal populations have rebounded because the country chose to protect them at scale, over decades, through science, enforcement and political commitment.

Malaysia should pay close attention.

Our Malayan tiger is not merely another endangered species. It is the symbol on our coat of arms; a creature embedded in our national identity. Yet in the forest, it is slipping away.

From a population once believed to be in the thousands, estimates fell to fewer than 150 tigers in 2021, although recent reports suggest that conservation efforts may be yielding some improvement.

That is encouraging, but it is no cause for complacency.

A species does not recover because we celebrate small gains.

It recovers because we remove the threats that pushed it to the brink.

INDIA'S TIGERS THRIVE

India has demonstrated what sustained action can achieve. Through Project Tiger, launched in 1973, the country built a national system of protected tiger reserves, intensive patrolling, habitat conservation, scientific monitoring and stronger involvement of communities living near forests.

India's tiger population rose from an estimated 1,411 in 2006 to 2,967 in 2018, underlining what can happen when conservation is treated as a national mission rather than a periodic campaign.

The lesson is not that Malaysia should copy India blindly. India is far larger, with a different political structure, population density and wildlife landscape.

But the core principles are universal: protect habitat, stop poaching, restore prey, reconnect forests, involve communities and measure results honestly.

Malaysia has plans. We have the National Tiger Conservation Action Plan. We have the Central Forest Spine Master Plan.

We have dedicated officers, conservation groups, resear-chers, indigenous communities and corporate partners doing important work.

But the tiger does not need another beautifully printed strategy. It needs effective action in the places where it lives, hunts and dies.

A NETWORK OF PRIORITIES

The first priority must be uncompromising protection of tiger landscapes.

Tigers cannot survive in scattered forest fragments. They need large, connected landscapes with sufficient prey and safe routes through which they can move, breed and establish territories.

A wildlife corridor on paper means nothing if it has been cut by roads, plantations, mining, fencing or unplanned development.

Malaysia must therefore defend and restore the ecological links between key forests, especially across the Central Forest Spine.

Belum-Temengor, Taman Negara, Endau-Rompin and other critical landscapes should be treated as national ecological assets, not as vacant spaces awaiting the next development approval.

Infrastructure development must also change. Roads and railways that cut through wildlife habitat should include properly engineered crossings, fencing and monitoring systems.

Development and conservation need not be enemies — but development that permanently destroys wildlife movement routes is simply short-sighted planning.

The second priority is enforcement.

Poaching remains one of the gravest threats to the Malayan tiger. Snares are especially brutal: cheap, difficult to detect and indiscriminate.

They do not only kill tigers. They also trap deer, wild boar, tapirs, elephants and other animals that form the ecological web of the forest.

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Malaysia needs more rangers, better-equipped patrol teams, stronger intelligence gathering and closer coordination between the Wildlife and National Parks Department, forestry departments, police, immigration, customs and border agencies.

Wildlife crime must be treated as serious organised crime, not as a minor environmental offence.

The third priority is prey.

A tiger cannot survive in a forest emptied of deer and wild boar. When poachers remove prey species, they weaken the entire food chain.

Tiger recovery must include aggressive action against illegal hunting, regular monitoring of prey numbers and habitat management that supports the full ecosystem, not just the tiger as a national icon.

COLLECTIVE EFFORT CRUCIAL

India's experience is instructive here.

Its tiger monitoring goes beyond counting the big cats.

It considers prey, forest quality, human pressure and habitat connectivity. That is the level of seriousness Malaysia must embrace.

But conservation cannot be enforced solely from Putrajaya or state capitals. The people who live nearest to the forest must be central partners.

Orang Asli communities, villagers, plantation workers and smallholders often bear the risks of living alongside wildlife.

If they lose livestock, crops or income, they deserve speedy and fair compensation.

They should also benefit from conservation through paid ranger support, restoration work, eco-tourism, monitoring programmes and community-based enterprises.

India's conservation model increasingly recognises that communities and wildlife must coexist, even though this remains difficult and imperfect.

Malaysia must pursue the same principle with greater empathy and respect for local rights, knowledge and livelihoods.

Saving the Malayan tiger is a test of national seriousness.

We cannot keep praising the tiger as a national emblem while allowing its habitat to be fragmented, its prey depleted and its survival left to under-resourced enforcement teams and civil society groups.

The tiger's fate will reveal whether Malaysia is prepared to protect its natural heritage with the same urgency it brings to roads, industries and economic growth.

India proves that recovery is possible.

Malaysia has the forests, the expertise and the public goodwill. What we need now is political courage, sustained funding and a whole-of-nation commitment.

The Malayan tiger should not become a symbol that survives only on our crest, in our stories and in our memories.