Javan Tiger Thought Extinct Due to Hunting and Habitat Loss Spotted in West Java

Javan tigers were reported to be extinct over a decade ago. However, a new report suggests that this may not be the case.

Javan Tiger Spotted in West Java

For many years, researchers have not been able to view the hide or hair of the Javan tiger, a relative of the Sumatran tiger that used to roam over Indonesia's most populous island. The Javan tiger was officially declared extinct in 2008 due to habitat degradation and ruthless hunting that lasted over a century.

A local citizen and conservationist named Ripi Yanur Fajar reported seeing a tiger outside a West Javan town in August 1818, 2019. He informed researcher Kalih Raksasewu about the sighting, and the two visited the suspected site with government employee Bambang Adryanto.

The two claim to have seen claw marks and footprints that belonged to a tiger. A solitary strand of hair was clinging to a fence separating the plantation from the village road.

The discovery was sent to Indonesia's Biology Research Center for National Research and Innovation (BRIN) in March 2022 for genetic investigation.

In a new study, the data were matched to those of Sumatran tigers and a Javan tiger specimen from a museum from 1930; both are believed to be members of the same subspecies (Panthera tigris sondaica).

The enigmatic strand's genetic makeup resembled that of Sumatran tigers 97%. Its genetic distance from the Javan tiger in the museum was 0.3%.

"From this comprehensive mtDNA analysis we conclude that the hair sample from South Sukabumi belongs to the Javan tiger, and that it falls in the same group as the Javan tiger museum specimen collected in 1930," the authors wrote.

"Whether the Javan tiger actually still occurs in the wild needs to be confirmed with further genetic and field studies."

The Javan tiger was widespread in forests and thickets. But today, Java is the most populous major island in the world, housing more than half of Indonesia's population. To sustain all those humans, much of the tiger's habitat has been destroyed to make room for agriculture.

As farms took over the forests and the Javan tiger's native sources of prey dwindled, the predators turned to livestock and were hunted as pests for decades.

In the 1970s, there were no more than a dozen Javan tigers across wildlife reserves and national parks in both East and West Java. Many of them disappeared in the following years.

Animals Thought Extinct But Were Not

If the Java tiger is not extinct, it's not the first to be declared extinct, only to show up later to prove its existence. Last year, the long-beaked echidna named after British broadcaster and biologist David Attenborough, which was thought to be extinct, was spotted in the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia.

Another study also suggested that fish houting from the North Sea were not extinct because they were the same as the European whitefish.

DNA samples from many of the museum's houses - some date back more than 250 years - were donated to the University of Amsterdam and the Natural History Museum in London. After that, they compared the fish's DNA to that of other living, closely related species to build a phylogenetic tree. The researchers discovered essentially no genetic differences between Coregonus lavaretus, the European whitefish, and Coregonus oxyrinchus, the houting.

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