Indonesia was once home to three species of Tiger, the Sumatran Tiger, Panthera tigris sumatrae, the Javan Tiger, Panthera tigris sondaica, and the Bali Tiger, Panthera tigris balica. Two of these species have been declared extinct in the past twenty years, the Javan Tiger in 2008, and the Bali Tiger in 2013, using the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's criteria of not having been observed in more than 30 years; the last confirmed sighting of a Javan Tiger happened in 1976 in Meru Betiri National Park, East Java.
The Javan Tiger was endemic to Java, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was frequently encountered in lowland forests, thickets, and even gardens on the island. However, it was widely seen as a pest (Tigers will feed on both livestock and Humans), leading to widespread hunting of the species, and its presumed extinction in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The last systematic search for the species deployed 35 camera traps in the Meru Betiri National Park in 1999-2000, but made no observations.
Although there have been no confirmed sightings since 1976, rumours of the species' continued existence persist, with numerous unconfirmed sightings, reports of footprints too large to belong to a Leopard, and even reports of attacks on livestock.
In a paper published in the journal Oryx on 21 March 2024, Wirdateti Wirdateti of the Research Center for Biosystematics and Evolution of the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency, Yulianto Yulianto of the Research Center for Applied Zoology of the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency, Kalih Raksasewu of the Yayasan Bentang Edukasi Lestari Bogor Foundation, and Bambang Adriyanto of the Cikepuh Wildlife Reserve, describe a possible sighting of a living Javan Tiger, and the results of an investigation which followed it.
On 18 August 2019, Ripi Yanur Fajar, a local resident and conservationist, reported seeing a Javan Tiger close to the village of Cipendeuy in South Sukabumi Forest, West Java, to Kalih Raksasewu, who visited the site the next day, along with Bambang Adriyanto. Ripi Yanur Fajar described the Tiger as having jumped a fence between a village road and a plantation, and examination of this fence by Raksasewu and Adriyanto led to the discovery of a single hair, which could potentially have come from a Tiger.
A genetic analysis was subsequently carried out in which DNA from the hair was compared to DNA from Sumatran Tigers, Bengal Tigers, Amur Tigers, Javan Leopards, and a museum specimen of the Javan Tiger, from Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense, collected in 1930. The hair was found to show a 4.2% difference to the Leopard sample, differences of between 3.7% and 4.1% from the Sumatran, Bengal, and Amur Tigers, but only a 0.3%d difference from the Javan Tiger museum specimen.
Wirdateti et al. stop short of claiming that they have proof that the Javan Tiger still exists on the basis of a single hair, but do believe that the hair comes from a member of the species, and that this merits further investigation into the possibility of a surviving population of these Tigers in West Java.
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