New Research on Malaysia’s Odd, Elusive Tapir

Anthony King, The New York Times 1 Jun 09;

TAMAN NEGARA NATIONAL PARK, Malaysia — In the Malaysian and Sumatran rain forests, tapirs are rarely glimpsed.

Ponderous, powerful herbivores, weighing about 650 pounds, tapirs have faces like anteaters, with a incessantly sniffing mobile snout. In dim rain forests, smell and hearing are the important senses. The animals have black and white shape-disrupting camouflage and make a whistling noise, sounding almost more bird than mammal. The Malay tapir, the largest of the world’s four tapir species, remained largely invisible to science until recently. The other three species of these odd, endearing animals all live in South America.

There was just one scientific study from the 1970s on the Malay tapir. Then, in 2002, the Malay Tapir Conservation Project was created, supported largely by the Copenhagen Zoo, and field biologists began filling in another blank page in zoology.

Great swaths of the rain forest in Malaysia and Sumatra had been destroyed for palm oil plantations and through illegal logging, and scientists had begun to worry that the tapir could slip silently toward extinction. A conservation center was set up within the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Reserve, an hour’s drive from Kuala Lumpur, and researchers like Carl Traeholt, a Danish-Malaysian biologist, began to gather data on tapir numbers and on the animals themselves.

Dr. Traeholt is the Malayan tapir coordinator for the international Tapir Specialist Group, which is concerned with all four tapir species. For the past five years, he has used cameras with motion sensors to photograph tapirs as they move through the forest at night to feed on fruits, leaves and soft twigs. An important early breakthrough was the realization that the patterns of wrinkles on tapirs’ necks can identify individuals.

The photographs showed that tapirs normally have a small home range, but will travel up to three miles a night to reach salty mineral deposits, presumably to consume minerals like calcium or iron. One of the sites studied was the Krau Wildlife Reserve north of Kuala Lumpur. “At some of these salt licks in Krau, tapirs are the most common animal on cameras, but it’s all the same individuals coming back,” Dr. Traeholt said.

The results showed that claims for a population of 800 to 1,000 individuals for an area the size of Krau, and 15,000 to 20,000 in Malaysia, were outlandishly optimistic. “This was way off reality. Otherwise we would have a traffic jam of tapirs in Krau,” Dr. Traeholt said.

There were actually just 40 or so individuals in Krau, which would mean about 1,500 to 2,000 in Malaysia, he said. There are perhaps 300 in Thailand; an unknown, unstudied population in Myanmar; and an unknown but decreasing number on Sumatra. A best guess, he said, is 4,000 individuals in Southeast Asia, a figure similar to the number of wild tigers.

The Malaysian research team last year attached a new kind of radio collar to a tapir in Krau. Half the reserve has coverage from a local telephone tower, and once within its range the new collar can transmit its data via phone signal to the tapir team’s computer. Tapirs are patchily distributed in what seems like homogenous forest. And the scientists want to know why. The collection of data from the collar, which occurs every five minutes, should help answer their questions.

Dr. Traeholt was recently joined by Boyd Simpson, a behavioral ecologist with experience in conservation projects in Australia and Asia, who is doing research on the Malay tapir for his doctorate. The two biologists met while working in Cambodia. Mr. Simpson is to take charge of a new phase of the tapir research in Taman Negara, the largest national park in Malaysia. This is an extension of the Krau research, and a comparison of findings between the two sites should prove fruitful. “If sightings are the same in the two areas we can extrapolate over the whole country,” Dr. Traeholt said. “But if they are different, we will have to go from area to area to find the density of the population.”

Mr. Simpson said that the big difference in the park research “is we’re planning to reintroduce captive animals from Sungai Dusun.” Before any reintroductions, the team will check whether there is an established animal that may “boot the newcomer out,” he said.

Though not aggressive, tapirs will defend their own patches, and they have large canine teeth, an oddity for plant eaters. That they use them is clear from the nicks and scars on their ears. They are thought to be more combative during the mating season, probably in April and May, Dr. Traeholt said, because there are more photos of two adult tapirs together during those months.

Mr. Simpson looks forward to seeing what makes tapirs tick. “They are funny-looking creatures, really intriguing,” he said.

The physiological need for minerals is especially interesting. He plans to look at the chemical composition of salt licks and try to work out why certain licks are preferred. It may be that tapirs consume lots of plant toxins and therefore need to ingest kaolin-type clays to absorb the toxins. Whether they drink water, lick rocks or eat mud around the licks is unknown, but infrared cameras are to be set up at licks to record their behavior.

Mr. Simpson had just begun working in Taman Negara when the team traveled to Keniam, a field station 90 minutes upstream via motorized canoe from the park headquarters. The station is run in association with the University of Technology, Malaysia and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks. Taman Negara contains some of the oldest rain forest in the world and sprawls over 1,676 square miles; it is part of a larger forest complex and has almost all of Asia’s large mammals, including sun bears, gaur, tigers, elephants and tapirs.

With its local field officer, Mohamed Sanusi bin Mohamed, the research group hiked through the forest to check camera traps and to place new ones along tapir trails. Dr. Traeholt, adept at locating tapir prints in the jungle, explained that trails and tracks were important signs, but tapir dung was almost never found. They defecate in water, possibly to avoid leaving a calling card for predators, will often stay close to water and can swim.

Though Malay tapirs are listed as endangered, Dr. Traeholt is confident their habitat in Malaysia and Thailand is now stable. He acknowledged that low numbers in some locations leave them vulnerable. Even in Krau, poaching could wipe out the viability of the entire population by removing just 20 to 25 animals.

The animal’s salt lick habit could be an Achilles’ heel: it makes them predictable and vulnerable to poaching. Just a single calf — cute, with white stripes — is born after 13 months’ gestation, so flattened tapir populations would rebound slowly.

Whether there is just one Malay tapir species or different subspecies, as is the case for tigers, is not known. Genetic analysis using tissue samples from Thailand, Malaysia and Sumatra has just begun. Dr. Traeholt said he thought small fragmented populations in parts of Thailand could be managed and invigorated by introducing animals, but it would be important to recognize genetic variations and identify any subspecies before mixing animals from different areas.

Dr. Bengt Holst, scientific director of the Copenhagen Zoo, which has a history of collaboration with the Malaysian wildlife authorities, said researchers planned to develop conservation priorities for the Malay tapir by discovering its habitat needs, social structures and behavior. By transforming it into a high-profile research species, he hopes researchers will be attracted to Malaysia and the species described from all angles — physiology, behavior, genetics and ecology. Tapir conservation would also put many other lower-profile species under its umbrella of protection.

For now, Dr. Traeholt hopes to create a conservation plan backed by ecology. And so this unique animal will avoid becoming either forgotten or extinct.