Sumatran tiger release sparks new controversy
A happy ending for a member of an endangered animal species, but a a story nonetheless steeped in controversy.
"Putri," a seven-year-old Sumatran Tiger was safely relocated recently to a habitat on the Betet Island in South Sumatra, Indonesia. The proceedings, which are documented in the accompanying video, depicts the chronology of the journey taken by the tiger en route to being released to roam through her new home of Sembilang National Park.
Putri, whose name means Princess in Indonesian, was rescued earlier this year in a South Sumatran plantation forest. That was good luck for an animal that's being hunted to the point of extinction by poachers. (About 500 Sumatran tigers still exist, according to one estimate.
The project was jointly carried out by Asia Pulp & Paper and a team of wildlife conservationists. However, Greenpeace offered a different spin on the story, criticizing Asia Pulp & Paper, which is also known by its acronym APP, for logging practices that it said were responsible for the tiger's peregrinations in the first place.
Greenpeace wrote in a blog post that APP's clearing of the forest had actually forced tigers to roam far and wide in pursuit of food as its habitat disappeared. "Destroying the forests which provide hunting and breeding grounds for tigers (as APP is doing) forces them closer to areas populated by people, and then its only a matter of time before someone (or something) gets hurt. In just one logging area in South Sumatra, APP has been responsible for the loss of 27,000 hectares of rainforest identified as tiger habitat since 2007," according to Greenpeace.
APP is one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world. Earlier this summer, Mattel dropped APP, saying it now asks packaging suppliers to clarify how deal with the question of deforestation in their own supply chains. In July, Lego announced that it, too, had stopped sourcing packaging products sold by APP, saying in a statement that the company would only source material from suppliers that are not involved in deforestation.
APP also was blamed by Greenpeace late last month when a Sumatran tiger died in a trap near one of its bases of excavations. The company said local villagers were responsible for setting the trap. But Greenpeace noted that the tiger was wandering in a region where "there was a large area of recently destroyed forest where active clearing was ongoing."