Video: Tigers and bulldozers

What at first appears to be a conservationist’s dream soon becomes a living nightmare. Under the cover of darkness on 5 May, 2010, a curious male Sumatran tiger strolls right up to the camera, pokes his nose in the lens, and sniffs all around, before stalking off. Just a week later, the landscape is unrecognisable.

This rare video footage – only 400 Sumatran tigers are left in Indonesia – was captured by WWF conservationists working in the Bukit Betabuh Protected Forest in Riau Province, Sumatra, with the help of camera traps. Triggered by heat sensors the cameras are set up in fixed locations to monitor nocturnal or rare species in the wild.

As the video shows, on 12 May the camera sensors are triggered again, not by wildlife this time but by bulldozers churning the forest floor into orange mud. According to the WWF, these forests are being illegally cleared for palm oil plantations. “Because of its status, both as a protected area and limited production forest, the area cannot be developed as a palm oil plantation, therefore any forest clearance, including bulldozing activities to clear the path, strongly indicates this excavation was illegal,” said Ian Kosasih, director of WWF-Indonesia’s forest and species programme.

Intensive deforestation is fragmenting the natural habitat of these tigers. As a consequence tigers struggle to find mates, food, and shelter, and are forced to live ever closer to humans. Indeed, this area acts as a wildlife corridor between two national parks, which is why the forest here is protected.


Deforestation isn’t the only threat to tigers in the region. In March 2010, WWF’s Tiger Patrol Unit and Riau’s Nature Conservation Agency confiscated over 100 tiger snares in Bukit Betabuh, laid by poachers.

Next up on the video, a tiger again walks through the denuded forest, as if to inspect the damage.