New Discovery of Second Tiger Population in Thailand Found in Thap Lan World Heritage Park

The world’s second breeding population of Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris corbetti) was discovered May 2017 in Thailand’s Dong-Phayayen Khao Yai Forest Complex - a UNESCO World Heritage site where Global Conservation is funding Global Park Defense.

A trio of tigers, a mother and her two cubs, inspect a PantheraCam.  Camera trap image courtesy of DNP/Freeland/Panthera.

According to one of over 120 cameras installed in the forests by the Department of National Parks Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), Panthera and Freeland Foundation between June last year and February this year, there are an estimated 18 tigers in the national park. 

This remarkable discovery now makes Thailand home to two breeding populations of this tiger subspecies, a significant step toward ensuring their long-term survival in the wild. This is the first positive news in the region in decades for the species.

Two tiger cubs investigate a rock along a forest trail as their mother walks past. Younger cubs accompany their mother, learning about the forest in which they live through sight and scent. Camera trap image courtesy of DNP/ Panthera/Freeland.

According to the department, there are 18 tigers living in the Eastern Forest Complex.

He said there is a possibility the tigers will be moved from Thap Lan National Park to Khao Yai National Park after the construction of a wildlife corridor is complete.

“Camera footage shows tigers walking around the place close to the construction site. We hope the tigers will use it to cross to Khao Yai, which could become a new home for them as their population increases,” added Mr Songtham. The wildlife corridor will soon link both national parks, which were earlier cut off by Highway 304.

Petch Manopawitr, IUCN’s conservation scientist, lauded Thailand forest officials on their outstanding job on tiger conservation in core areas by using a comprehensive ”SMART patrol system”, which can help reduce wildlife poaching.

Global Conservation and WCS Thailand are working together to assist the Department of National Parks Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) to protect the highly endangered Thap Lan World Heritage Park in the ‘Rosewood Wars’.

The SMART Patrol Center at Thap Lan National Park Headquarters equipped with SMART program, maps, and meeting room for monthly meeting for patrol reporting and planning among park rangers and officers.

Global Conservation’s support for Global Park Defense in Thap Lan is reducing illegal logging and wildlife poaching opening the possibility for the repopulation of tigers in Southeast Asia.

See more on the results of the Global Park Defense Program at Thap Lan World Heritage

A curious male tiger in Eastern Thailand. Camera trap image courtesy of DNP/Freeland/Panthera.

The discovery of at least six cubs in Thap Lan National Park, which connects to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex, is giving conservationists hope that Thailand might be able to double its tiger population by 2022.

The precise location of the discovery of the cubs has been kept secret to prevent hunters finding them.

While conservationists welcome these exciting new findings, they warn of the continued decline of tigers elsewhere in Thailand and across their global range. Currently, there are less than 3,200 tigers living in the forest, down 97% from 100,000 a century ago, due to poaching, and loss of forest reserve caused by human activities.

Songtham Suksawang, director of the Thailand National Parks Division, said female tigers in the wild usually give birth twice a year; the problem now is how to provide enough food and territory for them. If there is enough food, safe territory and a good patrol team that can prevent wildlife poaching, the tiger population is certain to increase, he added.

“We have found new cubs in the park for the first time in 15 years. This reflects the importance of having an effective patrol system. “If everything is in place, we are likely to meet our target of doubling the tiger population,” said Mr Songtham, adding successful measures will be replicated at other tiger parks.

The camera trap survey was conducted using the “photographic capture-recapture” method revealing a density of 0.63 tigers per 100 square kilometers (~1.63 tigers per 100 square miles ). While the scientific data suggests an exceptionally low tiger density — on par with some of the most threatened tiger habitats in the world — the findings, “demonstrate the species’ remarkable resilience given intensive wildlife poaching and illegal rosewood logging present in the Complex”.

Thailand was thought to house only one remaining viable breeding population of wild Indochinese tigers in Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary to the west of the country, which was reported to have 35 – 58 individuals as of February 2016.

The discovery of this “new” population is the result of months monitoring with specifically-designed camera traps, and weeks of hard trekking through the forest by rangers and conservationists throughout 2016.

Worldwide, currently only an estimated 3,000-4,000 tigers remain in the wild, and according to IUCN they now inhabit less than 6 percent of their historical range, which once spanned from Turkey across Asia to Russia’s eastern coast. Listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, breeding populations of wild tigers were thought to exist in thirteen different countries as recently as 2006, but their continued sharp decline now sees them only in eight (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand and Russia).

“The stepping up of anti-poaching patrols and law enforcement efforts in this area have played a pivotal role in conserving the tiger population by ensuring a safe environment for them to breed,” the Director of the National Parks Division of the DNP Songtam Suksawang said in the statement. “However, we must remain vigilant and continue these efforts, because well-armed poachers still pose a major threat.”

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005, the DPKY-FC is one of mainland Southeast Asia’s last contiguous tracts of forest providing adequate habitat for tigers. Thailand’s wild tiger populations have been driven to the brink of extinction chiefly due to habitat loss, rampant poaching, and overhunting of their prey animals. Fewer than 200 wild tigers are thought to remain in Thailand.

In 2011, the IUCN described the extent of the recent decline of the Indochinese subspecies as “serious” and “approaching the threshold of Critically Endangered.” If wild tigers are permitted to go extinct, “it would be the largest carnivore to do so since the American lion (Panthera leo atrox) died out at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 10,000 years ago,” John Vaillant wrote in “The Tiger.”

In 2016, tigers were declared in next door Cambodia to be “functionally extinct” stating, “there are no longer any breeding populations of tigers left in Cambodia,” largely due to intensive poaching and continued deforestation of Cambodia’s tropical dry forest ecosystems.

In Thailand, illegal Siamese rosewood logging rages on across the entire DPKY-FC, the illegal loggers increasingly pose a deadly threat to the freshly discovered wild tiger population.

With the support of Global Conservation and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Thailand, the country has ramped up protection against Siamese rosewood poaching syndicates using hundreds of Cambodian loggers. 

The Global Park Defense program in Thap Lan World Heritage is led by the Department of National Parks Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) with technical support from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Thailand.  Across the DPKF-FC, officials are deploying new motion-sensor cameras that can send images in almost real-time to an email account, allowing them to keep track of multiple areas at once without having to deploy rangers to those locations.

In June 2015 the DNP formed an elite group of forest rangers called “Hasadin” specifically tasked with curbing the species’ rampant poaching and subsequent degradation of Thailand’s eastern forests. To see a video on this new elite force see The Rosewood Wars.

Two young tiger cubs are among the first ever photographed in Eastern Thailand, lend new hope that their population can be recovered. Camera trap image courtesy of DNP/Freeland/Panthera.

Continued illegal logging, ongoing road expansion and encroachment within the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex saw the World Heritage Committee warn of a potential downgrading of the complex to the “World Heritage in Danger List” in 2015.

Subject to such extreme levels of poaching, tigers are only believed to have survived in the area due to an early recognition of the significance of this Eastern Thailand forest complex for the species’ future in Thailand, and a strict, long-term investment in well-implemented, counter-poaching law enforcement efforts from the national government.

Thailand’s World Heritage Forest Complex is home to prime forested habitat that, with significant conservation resources, could support eight times as many tigers as it does now. With continued infiltration of rigorous anti-poaching protection, there is no doubt that this population can be fully recovered, burgeoning into a tiger stronghold and serving as a source of life and diversity for depleted tiger populations in Cambodia, Lao PDR and throughout the species’ range.