Malayan tigers are critically endangered, and fewer than 150 of the animals – the Southeast Asian nation’s national symbol – remain in the wild.<\/p>\n
“We are outraged that despite the tireless efforts and sacrifices of rangers, poachers still brazenly destroy this majestic species for fleeting gain,” WWF-Malaysia said in a statement to AFP.<\/p>\n
It called for the stiffest sentences if the perpetrators were convicted, “sending an unmistakable message that Malaysia will not tolerate the killing of its most endangered species”.<\/p>\n
Tiger Protection Society of Malaysia Lara Araffin said the killing “demanded the harshest sentence”.<\/p>\n
“Tigers are apex predators that keep our rainforests in balance,” she told AFP, asking, “Do we really want a Malaysia without them?”<\/p>\n
The incident, widely covered by local Malaysian papers, “was deeply distressing and has sparked outrage across the country”, said the Malaysian Chinese Association, one of the ruling coalition’s political parties.<\/p>\n
“The poaching of the Malayan tiger, already a critically endangered species, is a direct assault on decades of conservation efforts,” the MCA’s Youth Wing said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Malayan tiger is classified as critically endangered by protection group the International Union for Conservation of Nature.<\/p>\n
Killing or possessing a tiger carries a penalty of up to RM1 million (US$238,000) and up to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
About 3,000 Malayan tigers once roamed the country’s jungles in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
But its population has declined over the decades due to a loss of habitat from development and agricultural expansion, as well as poaching.<\/p>\n
“To Malaysians, the Malayan tiger is more than a species – it is a national symbol … Losing it would mean losing part of who we are as Malaysians,” the WWF-Malaysia said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Malayan tigers are critically endangered, and fewer than 150 of the animals – the Southeast Asian nation’s national…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,935,128,13338,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-154955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-malaysia","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-tigers","13":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}