Malaysia: Tapirs losing out

Tan Cheng Li The Star 8 Nov 11;

Tapirs are another casualty of our dwindling forest cover and expanding development.

BENDUL, the Malayan tapir, is a sorry sight. Unlike the other tapirs at the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Conservation Centre which have hefty, robust bodies, Bendul is almost all skin and bones. Her coat is dull and grey, not a healthy shine like that on the others. Her ribcage shows under her skin and her body is badly scarred.

She was named after the place where she was found loitering in late September, a village in Ulu Bendul some 16km from Seremban in Negri Sembilan, and arrived at the centre wounded and starving.

“After trapping her, we had planned to return her to the forest but when we saw that she had a bullet wound which was infested with maggots, we decided to bring her here,” says Mahathir Mohamad who heads the Sungai Dusun centre, located in the upper reaches of Selangor about 90 minutes’ drive from Kuala Lumpur.

From the tell-tale size and shape of the wound, wildlife officers believe Bendul had been shot by wild boar hunters, probably mistakenly. “Villagers say they have seen the tapir with two young. We searched but could not find the juveniles. We believe they have also been shot,” says Mahathir.

At Sungai Dusun, a 4,330ha sprawl of protected peatswamp and lowland dipterocarp forest near the Selangor-Perak boundary which is both a rescue and captive breeding centre, Bendul is seen chomping on the leaves of the mengkirai, nangka and mahang trees which keepers have collected from the forest. Soon, she will be fed nutrition-laden pellets to fatten her up. At the centre, she joins six other tapirs – four of which are captive-breds and two, also rescued tapirs.

Bendul is the latest statistic in a growing list of displaced tapirs. As forests give way to human settlements, plantations and industrial development, and are fragmented by roads, tapirs are crowded out. They now number only between 1,100 and 1,500 in Peninsular Malaysia, and can no longer be found in Borneo.

The Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) has recorded an upward trend in tapir displacements: five cases in 2006, 25 in 2007, 39 in 2008, 22 in 2009 and 41 in 2010. Of the 142 cases seen during that period, the majority (95) were of tapirs which had ventured out of their normal habitats into villages, plantations, logging areas, forest fringes and roadsides. Fifteen were roadkills, 12 were wounded tapirs which eventually died from the injuries, and 20 were tapirs sent to Sungai Dusun, Zoo Melaka and other protected areas.

The cases mostly occurred in Pahang (46) and Johor (32), followed by Negri Sembilan (21), Selangor (17) and Terengganu (15).

“Habitat disturbance and fragmentation appear to be the main factors forcing the tapir out of its habitat to seek food near forest fringes, plantations and human settlements. Activities like housing, logging, construction of highways, railways and dams all lead to the loss of tapir habitat,” says wildlife officer David Magintan at the 5th International Tapir Symposium in Kuala Lumpur last month.

And although tapirs are not targeted by hunters, they get caught in snares set up for other animals like deer, wild boar and tigers.

Magintan says measures to reduce the displacements include erecting animal crossings under viaducts, putting up “tapir crossing” roadsigns and creating forested corridors to link fragmented forests.

Electric fences installed to prevent wild elephants from entering villages can also deter tapirs, he adds.

The Sungai Dusun centre has housed a total of 34 tapirs since conservation work on the species started there in 2007. The numbers vary yearly due to mortality as well as releases to wild areas and other captive facilities.

The centre is now left with seven tapirs, following the sudden deaths of seven individuals over two weeks late last year, an occurrence which appears to replicate the 2003 tragedy in which Sungai Dusun’s whole population of five rare Sumatran rhinoceros died over an 18-day span from septicaemia (blood poisoning).

Last year’s tapir fatality between Sept 17 and Sept 29 was attributed to infection caused by the bacteria Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, according to a press statement by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. To save the remaining six tapirs from further infection, it said antibiotics and anti-protozoa prescription for blood parasite were administered, and the animals were moved from the paddocks and night stalls into forested enclosures.

Today, there are seven tapirs at Sungai Dusun. Four are males: Boy (from Singapore Zoo), Kemat (rescued from Terengganu), Junior and Satria (both born at Sungai Dusun). The females are Mala (born in Zoo Melaka), Perabong and Bendul (both rescued from Negri Sembilan).

To date, the centre has seen eight births, the latest being that of Satria, in June 2010.

The plan all along was to release captive-breds into the forests of Sungai Dusun and other areas where the species has become depleted. However, introducing man-raised animals into the wild is no easy task. Last year, an attempt to introduce the tapir Mala into the Sungai Dusun forest came to naught as the Zoo Melaka-born animal found its way back to the paddock soon after its release.

Furthermore, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) protocol prohibits re-introductions into areas which house an existing population of the species. Sungai Dusun itself has wild tapirs, as do most forest reserves in the country, albeit in declining numbers.

One tapir, Ketupat, was released in 2009 into Sungai Dusun forest and three captive-bred tapirs – Khai, Ujang and Suraya – have been sent to Taman Negara in 2009 and 2010. Recent visitors to the park have observed two tapirs there – Khai and Tahan (a captive-born from Zoo Melaka). They say although both have been released into the wild, they return to the vicinity of the park headquarters every few days.

Following the string of tapir deaths, captive-breeding of the species at Sungai Dusun has ceased, though that of the Malayan porcupine continues. Mahathir says the centre might no longer be a suitable site what with oil palm estates, villages and other developments marching right up to its edges.

“Just last year, a poultry farm opened a kilometre away and livestock such as cattle and buffaloes graze just outside the reserve. There is a risk of these domestic animals transmitting harmful pathogens to the tapirs,” he says.

With the suitability of Sungai Dusun as a captive-breeding facility in question, there are talks of setting up a similar facility elsewhere as a replacement. However, some scientists see no point in further captive-breeding of the tapir, seeing that such animals would merely be to stock zoos both here and abroad.

On the brink
Tan Cheng Li The Star 8 Nov 11;

THE Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus) is the largest of the world’s four tapir species. The other three species – lowland, mountain and Baird’s – are found in Central and South America. Once distributed over South-East Asia, the Malayan tapir is now confined to Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra in Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, and continues to decline in numbers in all four countries.

“Only the first two countries have significant populations and habitat remaining. The decline in population is the result of continued habitat loss from illegal logging and the lack of protection of most areas still containing significant populations,” says Dr Alan Shoemaker at a tapir symposium in Kuala Lumpur last month.

A member of the Tapir Specialist Group in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Shoemaker says populations in Myanmar are especially at risk as they are restricted to rainforests in the Tenasserim Range where only 5% of the forest is protected. In Sumatra, he says, over 50% of the remaining habitat is outside tapir domain and hunting is uncontrolled. In Thailand, 40% of the remaining forest is unprotected.

“Only the population in Malaysia appear, although perhaps falsely, to be secure and even that population only appears to be around 1,500 to 2,000. Because individual tapirs are now known to travel greater distances than previously thought, even this “safe” population is probably much lower.”

For all these reasons, the conservation status of the species was elevated from “vulnerable” to “endangered” in the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species in 2008.

According to the IUCN, Malayan tapir numbers have halved in the past three generations (36 years), driven primarily by large-scale conversion of lowland tapir habitat to oil palm plantations and other human-dominated land-use. It says remaining populations are isolated in existing protected areas and forest fragments, which are discontinuous and offer little opportunity for genetic exchange for these forest-dependent species.

Hunting is also cause for concern in the future as already reduced and isolated sub-populations would be at great risk for extirpation. Scientists says local extinction or population declines of tapirs can disrupt some key ecological processes such as seed dispersal and nutrient recycling, and eventually compromise the integrity and biodiversity of the forest ecosystem.

Hopeful news

For the Malaysian tapir population, biologist Dr Carl Traeholt remains optimistic as he considers the situation here to be better than in other range countries, where the species is under great pressure.

“Malaysia has taken efforts to protect the tapir. It has over 40% forest cover and if we can keep it as it is now, we can safeguard the species. The crucial thing is that there is no more significant habitat loss. As long as we control habitat destruction, we are going in the right direction.”

Also critical to tapir conservation is implementation of the national Tiger Action Plan, a document finalised in early 2009 which spells out the actions needed in order to boost tiger numbers.

Conservation strategies in the plan includes securing and expanding tiger refuges, improving forestry management, linking fragmented forests with vegetated corridors, stricter enforcement against poachers and wise land-use to overcome man-tiger clashes.

“If we can implement the tiger protection plan successfully, there will be a spill-over effect ... we can also conserve the tapir,” says Traeholt, who for the past decade, has conducted camera trapping, radio telemetry and captive-breeding research on the species here.

He says there will be a regional meeting next year to draft guidelines on ex-situ conservation of the Malayan tapir, particularly on regional standards on husbandry and care. Captive animals, being housed in different environmental condition from the wild, have been known to develop clinical pathologies related to stress, diet or the enclosure environment. Symptoms often become complex to diagnose. There have been cases of tapirs in European zoos contracting tuberculosis and at one zoo in Argentina, corneal ulcer.

In Myanmar, little is known about the status and distribution of tapirs. Only one protected area in southern Myanmar, the 1,700sqkm Taninthayi Nature Reserve, conserves tropical rainforests and affords protection for tapirs, tigers, Asian elephants and other biodiversity, according to Nay Myo Shwe of the Myanmar Forest Department.

“Hunting, and habitat loss and degradation are major threats to tapirs in and around Taninthayi,” he says at the symposium. Between March and June, surveys were conducted using camera-traps, tracks and signs. Nay says that from interviews with 119 villagers and military staff, it was found that a third had eaten tapir meat in the last 14 years and hunters – some were after elephants – had killed at least 26 tapirs in the past 20 years. The survey also shows that tapirs were accidentally killed in pit fall traps and during commercial logging prior to the reserve being gazetted (from 1989 to 1996).

Nay says the priority for now is to curb poaching and accidental killings of tapirs. In response to the threat, a ranger training programme was established to raise capacity for patrolling and law enforcement.