WATCH: Roadside-Bound, Emaciated Tiger Calls For Concern Regarding Local Wildlife Protection

By Lara Lindemann  •  in News
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Last Thursday (May 31), Twitter user Sharifah Sofia (@sharifahsofia) published a tweet depicting a seemingly malnourished tiger roaming across a sparse forest ground, located close to the roadside.

While she refused to disclose the exact location where the clip was filmed in fear that poachers may target the area, she confirmed that it was somewhere in Kelantan.

The post quickly garnered attention from the public. Currently, it has over 5,000 retweets.

Under the same thread, Sharifah went on to explain that the authorities played a major role in protecting wildlife and the people in their vicinity.

She also explained that the local ecosystem was beginning to deplete due to deforestation practices and their focus on financial gain, failing to comprehend the overall damage that results from it.

According to World of Buzz, netizens were in awe of the video. The tiger, notorious for its predatory instincts and hard-to-spot nature was in such close proximity to the roads frequented by humans.

Sharifah admitted that the sighting was rare and surreal at first glance, but the horrifying reality remains that it was actually an extremely worrying scenario.

“I met someone a couple of weeks ago during my walk and she said his friends done kena makan by a tiger just behind her house,” she stated.

Her call to raise awareness on the increasingly endangered species of domestic tigers extended to concerned netizens across the platform, who reached unanimous verdicts of disappointment and fury:

Another user thanked Sharifah for publicising the video, in hopes that the authorities and politicians will begin to shift their focus on the balding local jungles.

Environmental science website Mongabay reports that wildlife-rich jungles flourished in Malaysia at one point, prior to activities such as deforestation, unlawful hunting and bulldozing.

This was before projects to develop gold mines and oil palm plantations came into existence.

Elephants, tigers, and sun bears prowled the interiors of the rainforests, and threatened species of tropical trees also thrived near the coast.

source: Our Environment

However, some of these reserves were removed from the list of permanent forest reserves in 2014, with portions of the territory transferred to private hands. Seven years later, a fifth of the over 17,000 resected hectares (42,000 acres) have been lifted.

The site also reports that extractive companies are apparently razing vast swaths of rainforest in an attempt to benefit from timber sales whilst also preparing to plant lucrative oil palm.

All of this is happening on land possessed by Malaysian ‘higher ups’, raising concerns about the efficiency of a nationwide preservation action plan, in which the previous reserves were involved.

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