In the thick, steamy forests of western Thailand, 20 skittish sambar deer dart from an enclosure into the undergrowth – unaware they may find themselves in the jaws of one of the habitat’s 200 or so endangered tigers.
The release is part of a project run by the government and conservation group WWF to provide tigers with prey to hunt and eat, which has helped the big cat make a remarkable recovery in Thailand.
The wild tiger population in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex, near the border with Myanmar, has increased almost fivefold in the last 15 years from about 40 in 2007 to between 179 and 223 last year, according to the kingdom’s Department of National Parks (DNP).
It is an uptick that WWF’s Tigers Alive initiative leader Stuart Chapman calls “extraordinary”, especially as no other country in Southeast Asia has seen tiger numbers pick up at all.
The DNP and the WWF have been breeding sambar, which are native to Thailand but classed as vulnerable, and releasing them as prey.
Now in its fifth year, the prey release is a “very good activity,” says the DNP’s Chaiya Danpho, as it addresses the ecosystem’s lack of large ungulates for tigers to eat.
Over the past century numbers worldwide have fallen from about 100,000 individuals to an estimated 5,500, according to the IUCN, which classifies tigers as endangered due to habitat loss and overhunting of the species and their natural prey.
