Tan Ju-Eng, The Star 10 Jul 10;
TEN young people – aged 20 to 28 — from different academic backgrounds and training, went on an expedition to the Belum National Park in Perak last week.
The group comprised accountancy, culinary school, communications and economics students and some graduates in building technology and biotechnology. Among them was a graduate in conservation biology.
They were all on a four-day expedition to work on a project supporting WWF TX2 campaign to double the number of tigers in the country by 2022.
WWF field biologist Lau Ching Fong, 25, a biotechnologist, has been working with WWF for two years.
“I joined the tiger conservation efforts only recently. If you have the passion, just go for it even though you don’t have the proper qualification,” he said.
Lau is excited about being able to carry out the job on the ground and that his work could contribute to the whole conservation effort and to a bigger plan in the future.
His colleague Christopher Wong Chai Thiam, 25, joins him in the Belum forest monthly to set and change camera traps to track the existence of tigers in the area and their movements.
He is particularly passionate about collecting, researching and analysing the data to help save the animals.
During the expedition, the team got to change a camera trap set up earlier which captured the photo of a deer. The camera trap is an important gadget to show the presence of wildlife in these areas.
In the last six months, tigers were captured on film by the camera traps set up in Temenggor.
During the four days, the team trekked and gathered information to enable them create a communication tool that will help bridge the gap of understanding between the community and the abstract idea of tiger conservation.
“The WWF officers have pointed out that the markings on the tree were done by poachers. This is enough to alert us on the need to support WWF’s efforts in tiger conservation,” said Ee Mei Chin, 28, a finance executive with D’Jungle People Training Consultants.
The Tiger Trex expedition is organised by Thestaronline.TV in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund - Malaysia (WWF-Malaysia) and sponsored by D’Jungle People Training Consultants.
The expedition took them into the Belum forest with WWF Tiger team to change camera traps, visit salt lick and to talk to orang asli villagers about their experiences with tigers.
The challenge for the team is to put all their skills, experiences and information from the expedition together in a project to help the WWF TX2 campaign collect 50,000 signatures to lobby for more government support and political will to help eliminate the threat to tigers.
It is hoped that with the signatures they will be able to persuade Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to attend the Tiger Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, in September.
At the summit, heads of state from 13 tiger-range countries will meet and decide the future of the world’s remaining 3,200 tigers.
Malaysia is home to the world’s second largest wild tiger population, after India. It has declared its goal to double its tigers by 2020 and a plan on how this can be achieved.
The National Tiger Action Plan for Malaysia was released in 2008 and aims to have 1,000 wild tigers by 2020 through four main strategies.
Some of the activities are already being carried out by various government agencies and the Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers (MYCAT), of which WWF-Malaysia is a part.
Malaysia is signatory to the Hua Hin Declaration in Thailand earlier this year where ministers and representatives at the First Asian Ministerial Conference on Tiger have committed to globally double wild tiger population.
The declaration also included a review on each country’s tiger conservation strategies or action plans before the Tiger Summit, where the heads of state will announce acceleration of the implementation of national and regional tiger conservation programmes.
The WWF TX2 signature campaign is aimed at getting Malaysia committed to implementing its Tiger Action Plan and come up with a “big win” for tigers that can be showcased at the Summit.
