{"id":270564,"date":"2026-02-06T10:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/270564\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T10:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:44:16","slug":"how-a-royal-tiger-reserve-is-protecting-the-last-of-malaysias-big-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/270564\/","title":{"rendered":"How a royal tiger reserve is protecting the last of Malaysia\u2019s big cats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Malaysia\u2019s tigers are disappearing fast \u2014 and their unlikely champion is a 30\u2011year\u2011old crown prince.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah, the crown prince of Pahang, set up the Save the Malayan Tiger conservation program and established Southeast Asia\u2019s first royal tiger reserve, which envelops part of Taman Negara, the country\u2019s largest national park, in newly protected forest.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the 1950s, as many as 3,000 Malayan tigers roamed wild across the peninsula. But today, just 150<\/a> remain.\n <\/p>\n

\n Taman Negara has no buffer zone, leaving its boundary exposed to illegal hunting and the pressures of logging and deforestation for agriculture.\n <\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n In 2023, the crown prince established the Al-Sultan Abdullah Royal Tiger Reserve (ASARTR), which is managed by Pahang State Parks and local conservation organization Enggang Management Services (EMS).\n <\/p>\n

\n ASARTR increases the national park\u2019s area by more than 30%, creating a 568,500-hectare (1.4 million-acre) protected area for tiger populations to recover.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf there\u2019s a connectivity of forests, the population can grow naturally,\u201d says Adrian Cheah Chor Eu, an assistant project coordinator at international wildcat conservation nonprofit Panthera, which supports the reserve with advice for big cat conservation.\n <\/p>\n

\"Chin<\/p>\n

\n Tigers can roam freely between the national park and the reserve to find prey, establish their own territory, and avoid conflict with people and other tigers, Eu adds.\n <\/p>\n

\n The reserve\u2019s connection to Taman Negara, one of \u201cthe greatest strongholds for tigers\u201d in Malaysia, makes it a vital part of the nation\u2019s conservation efforts for the species, says Chin Weng Yuen, wildlife analyst at Panthera, who oversees data collection from the reserve\u2019s network of more than 340 camera traps.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe look at tiger density, where they are, and of course, tiger prey,\u201d says Yuen. \u201cThe tiger reserve is a newly gazetted (legally protected) area, so we don\u2019t know a lot. It\u2019s very crucial for us to really go in and get this data to know what\u2019s in there, and what\u2019s the baseline.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Taman<\/p>\n

\"Malayan<\/p>\n

\n Patrols follow a \u201cdeep-forest counter-poaching strategy<\/a>,\u201d which has led to the disruption of three poaching incidents in ASARTR, and in 2025, the reserve was snare free, says Panthera.\n <\/p>\n

\n Around 26 rangers are from the Indigenous Orang Asli community, whose expertise in tracking and wilderness survival is essential in the dense rainforest.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey have so much knowledge of the reserve,\u201d says Eu. \u201cWe (city people) can navigate ourselves but we don\u2019t know much about the forest.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The reserve is tackling tiger conservation through multiple approaches. For example, Malaysian wildlife nonprofit BORA is focused on boosting tiger prey species like sambar deer and boar, which are struggling in the area due to unsuitable habitat, game hunting, and in the case of wild pigs, African swine fever.\n <\/p>\n

\n Local conservation trust The Habitat Foundation is overseeing community engagement and habitat enrichment through tree nurseries, as well as implementing sustainable tourism projects funded by Malaysia\u2019s Ministry of Finance.\n <\/p>\n

\n And it\u2019s not just tigers that benefit from these conservation efforts. Home to seven wild cat species \u2014 tiger, leopard, clouded leopard, leopard cat, flat-headed cat, marbled cat and the Asiatic golden cat \u2014 Panthera describes Taman Negara as a \u201cCatscape,\u201d which also boasts 150 mammal species and 380 types of birds.\n <\/p>\n

\n The reserve has received international support, including grants of \u20ac1 million ($1.18 million) from the European Union in 2024, and $22 million from the United Arab Emirates\u2019 Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund in 2025, according to EMS.\n <\/p>\n

\n The reserve is part of a broader push to reconnect Malaysia\u2019s Central Forest Spine, a 5.3-million-hectare (13-million-acre) north\u2011south belt of rainforest which has been fragmented through deforestation. Malaysia has lost nearly a third<\/a> of its primary forest since the 1970s, but efforts from the government and NGOs resulted in a 13% reduction <\/a>in primary forest loss in 2024 compared to the previous year. Plans to create 37 ecological corridors in the Central Forest Spine will help wildlife to move freely again.\n <\/p>\n

\"Only<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat gene flow is really important to prevent inbreeding,\u201d says Yuen. \u201cFor long-term tiger conservation, that will be really important.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n For now, there are early signs the reserve\u2019s conservation efforts are working: last year, a mother and her two cubs were spotted on camera traps, the first signs of breeding in the reserve.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat\u2019s quite exciting and pretty encouraging,\u201d says Yuen.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Malaysia\u2019s tigers are disappearing fast \u2014 and their unlikely champion is a 30\u2011year\u2011old crown prince. Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-270564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}