Stranded in Shrinking Islands in the Indonesian Jungle...

The Sumatran tiger is a magnificent animal, prowling the steaming jungles of Indonesia, now mostly in spots on the island of Sumatra and in some places on Borneo, little islands of reasonably safe existence in a region that once swarmed with them. The tiger, known formally as panthera tigris sumatrae, is the orange and black-striped beauty that most of us picture when we think of tigers, very much like the Bengal tiger (a popular image here in Cincinnati) but its numbers have dwindled to less than 400 in Indonesia. Let that number sink in for a moment...four hundred. If only one of them died each day, without any new ones being born, then they would be extinct before August 2016. To make that even more clear, if just two died per day, they would be gone forever before next spring. These beautiful creatures are perilously close to extinction, having acheived the dubious status of "Critically Endangered", which translates to "Most likely it will go extinct, and soon." This means that only very stringent measures, taken immediately, can stop this from happening, and that might not be enough. Even non-human threats could be enough to wipe them out. Say, a viral disease peculiar to their species might be enough to do it. But that's no reason to give up. The American bald eagle was taken off the critically endangered least, as was the brown pelican, once thought to be all but extinct.

The Sumatran tiger is, like all animals on this tragic list, threatened by a number of factors, and the biggest threats come from us. We tend to think of poaching and senseless slaughter when we imagine a species going extinct, and that is certainly happening with this tiger. Many of the most ancient cultural practices from China down through Malaysia, Indonesia and New Guinea, among other countries, put absurdly high values on pelts and delicacy meats, teeth and other parts of this tiger and many other animals, too (we all know about the slaughter of sharks for that ridiculous soup.) Rhinos are slaughtered for a tiny part of their horn which, when ground to a powder, is sold to fools as an aphrodisiac. How can animals compete against the peoples who live in this part of the world, many of them impoverished, and who can fetch an enormous sum for simply taking a rifle and shooting down a tiger? If you thought you could feed your family, always in danger of getting sick from malnutrition, by killing an animal, would you? Most people would, because here in America and other places we have the luxury of worrying about the animals on the extinction lists. So a major factor in the mass slaughter of these tigers is economic; people are desperate and driven to killing tigers in order to put food on the table. Or sometimes it's just greed. But another factor that gets less consideration outside of conservation circles is loss of habitat. Slash-and-burn ground clearance for human expansion, as well as logging operations and forests leveled for farmland, is destroying huge chunks of the habitat these tigers (and many other animals and plants, beside) need to survive. Again, money and greed pair up to sign the death warrant of the Sumatran tiger. This map shows the decline in the forests and, subsequently, the tiger's habitat on the island of Sumatra.

There are some strong legal protections in place for this smallest of all tiger populations, with both heavy fines and jail time for poachers, but it will not be enough to stop to disappearance of the Sumatran tiger. Like all other extinctions, including our own, it will take an economic and cultural shift the likes of which humanity has never before achieved to save this animal, other animals and habitats, and even ourselves.

Look at the picture of the tiger above...study it. It will probably be gone before your kids are born. Maybe before you even finish college.