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Malayan Tiger
Name : Panthera tigris jacksoni (Malayan
Tiger) discovered in 2004 as the 9th subspecies of the tiger. Named
“ to honor the contributions of Peter Jackson, the former Chair of
the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Cat Specialist Group, who tirelessly
labored for more than 40 years on behalf of tiger
conservation.”
Description : Morphologically similar to the
Indo-Chinese tiger, but the size is closer to the Sumatran tigers with
average weight of 120 kg for adult males and 100 kg for females.
Distribution : The Malayan tiger is found only in
the Malay Peninsula , southern tip of Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia.
Tigers are not found in East Malaysia ( Borneo ). In Malaysian, they are
sparsely distributed from the northern transboundary forests contiguous
to Thailand to the most southern tip of continental Asia . Besides the
three main tiger landscapes: Main Range (ca. 20,000 sq km), Greater
Taman Negara (ca. 15,000 sq km) and the Southern Forest Complex (ca.
10,000 sq km), tigers are still found in isolated small forests,
secondary vegetation fields, and abandoned agricultural land in low
human density and road density areas of the east coast. Majority (88%)
of the tiger habitats are found in the four main states of Pahang,
Perak, Terengganu and Kelantan.
Biology : Malayan tigers prey on sambar deer,
barking deer, wild boar and livestock. Tigers in Taman Negara also prey
on sun bear. Whether their principal prey includes gaur and tapir is
unknown. Tigers occur at very low densities 1.1-1.98 tigers per 100km 2
in the rainforest as a result of low prey densities, thus in order to
maintain viable tiger populations of minimum of 6 breeding females,
reserves need to be larger than 1000km 2. Biological/ecological research
on the Malayan tiger is still in infancy. For example, information on
dietary preference, morphological measurements, demographic parameters,
social structure, communication, home range sizes, dispersal
capabilities are all lacking.
Status in the wild : Since the late 1980s, at least
500 tigers are thought to remain in Malaysia , which has carrying
capacity of 493 to1480 tigers based on available habitat with known
presence of tigers and expected mean density estimates of 1-3 adult
tigers/100 sq km. The tigers are apparently near the carrying capacity
in the Taman Negara National Park which has 91 adults and cubs
corresponding to a density of 1.1 – 1.98 adults per 100km 2. In
unprotected areas, tigers are threatened by logging operations,
retaliatory killings resulting from human-tiger conflict and incidental
killings due to wire snares set for other wildlife such as wild boars.
Nearly 90% of the tiger habitat is outside the protected areas where
their status is uncertain and in need of further attention.
Captive breeding : A genetic analysis of the phylogeny of tigers
in 2004 split the Indo-Chinese subspecies into two distinct subspecies:
the Indo-Chinese tiger and the Malayan tiger and the authors argue that
the captive populations for these two subspecies should be managed in a
similar way to the other recognized subspecies but it is unclear
how this information will be used by the zoo community.
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