By: M. Afdhal
On the morning of the third week of April 2016, I was accompanied by a local guide on a routine motorized patrol. We started our patrol from Pangkalan Indarung village to Tanjung Medang village, a buffer zone of the Bukit Batabuh Protection Forest in Kuantan Singingi district. This patrol was particularly rewarding as we saw three Sumatran tigers pass directly in front of us.

As a member of the patrol team at WWF Central Sumatra Program, every month I carry out the task of collecting data related to threats to the area, especially around the Rimbang Baling forest and Bukit Batabuh Protection Forest. As usual, using a two-wheeled vehicle, this time I was with Hafiz, my local guide, patrolling in and around the forest area. This is day nine, and just as we leave the village of Pangkalan Indarung, we are stopped in our tracks by a herd of wild boars. We continued our journey and met a group of timber workers who were cutting wood in an area that is included in the Bukit Batabuh Protected Forest.

We also dug up information from these loggers, there were about ten people. One of the workers told us that in the past month they often saw several tigers passing near their camp. Two of them had even seen the tiger in the afternoon about four days earlier. We are not sure about the number because some said three tigers, some said two tigers.

We felt challenged by this information to continue patrolling the edge of the area between Bukit Batabuh and Rimbang Baling. As a member of the TPU (Tiger Protection Unit) team, I felt a little proud to hear the word "some" from the woodworker, which means that there is a growing population of Sumatran tigers in the area. As a member of the TPU, I am tasked with ensuring that Sumatran tigers are safe from threats that would disrupt or hinder the development of the Sumatran tiger population. And this area is our work priority.

We continued our patrol by looking for signs of the tiger's presence. We passed through a road that was quite bad due to the rain that flushed this area the night before, the road was muddy and very slippery. We rode our motorcycles very carefully, several times breaking through the resam-resam that almost covered the road. The slippery and muddy road caused our motorcycles to slip into the ditches. A very, very bad position with the situation of having to hold the motorcycle that almost fell on my body.

Unintentionally, my gaze was directed forward towards the intersection. I was so surprised that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. A mother tiger was herding two cubs across the intersection not far from us, holding back a motorcycle that almost fell on me. We were probably only about 30-50 meters away. I could clearly see a fairly large mother tiger coming out of the thicket towards the access road, followed by two small cubs, about the size of a 6-month-old puppy, running around while playing. The three of them crossed to the crossroads in front of me. The road was a former doser (heavy equipment) road.

Amazed, proud and mixed with fear, that's how I felt. After the tiger disappeared behind the bush, we waited for a while and then decided to check the location of the three tiger crossings. Mixed with the disappointment of not being able to capture tuk belang, the guardian of this huta, we approached the location after struggling to restore the position of the motorbike. At the location where we found the tiger's footprints, for a moment we looked around with a feeling of fear. We found no human activity in the vicinity. And again with a sense of disappointment that we did not succeed in capturing the king of the forest, we immediately left the location. We suspected the tiger was just passing by because not far from the location there was a creek.

We continued to patrol the area for the next five days looking for information and signs of the big cats that own the jungle. But we didn't find any other significant signs or threats.

After this incident, for two consecutive months, I continued to monitor the area. Although I no longer saw them in person, I was informed that some timber workers still saw the tigers and signs of their presence were still visible. I smile and hope that all three tigers will be able to survive for the sake of the endangered Sumatran tiger population.

Bukit Batabuh Protection Forest falls within the administrative areas of Kuantan Singingi and Indragiri Hulu, Riau. This area connects two important tiger habitats, the Rimbang Baling and Bukit Tigapuluh landscapes, known as a biological corridor. WWF's research on the population and distribution of Sumatran tigers through the camera trap method has proven the presence of Sumatran tigers in this area. Several individual tigers have been documented from this area.