Malaysia tiger park plan attacked

The number of tigers has fallen from 3,000 to 500 in the last 50 years

Conservationists have attacked a Malaysian plan to set up a tiger park on the resort island of Penang.

Wildlife groups say the park would violate the government's pledge to double the population of wild tigers.

Penang's government recently proposed creating a 100 acre (40 hectare) tiger park to attract tourists.

Illegal hunting and destruction of the tigers' jungle habitat has reduced Malaysia's wild tiger population from 3,000 to 500 in the last 50 years.

The Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers said the country already had 40 zoos and that maintaining them was posing a challenge to authorities.

In a letter to the Penang government, the alliance said that tiger reserves in China similar to the Malaysian proposal were little more than farms to breed tigers.

They have been implicated in the illegal trade in tiger parts, the alliance said.

It also pointed to the expense of maintaining tigers in captivity.

The group said the project would violate a federal government commitment to protect jungle corridors in order to double the wild tiger population to 1,000 by 2020.

Procurement issues

Conservation group WWF-Malaysia said the issue of procuring tigers for the proposed park was problematic.

"Wild tigers cannot be removed from their natural habitat as they are protected under the Protection of Wild Life Act," said Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma, WWF-Malaysia's chief executive officer.

"Tigers caught due to human-tiger conflict incidents are currently managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Departments at the Malacca Zoo while importing tigers from other countries would require a CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) permit," the Malaysian Star newspaper quoted him as saying.

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has said the island needs a new eco-tourism project to attract more visitors but pledged that all public views would be considered before a final decision was made.

Although Malayan tigers have been protected by wildlife laws since the early 1970s, their numbers have been hit by demand for their meat and for body parts, which are sometimes used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Malaysia's tropical forests are home to a wide range of threatened animals, including orang-utans, Borneo sun bears, Sumatran rhinoceroses and pygmy elephants.