BANGKOK – The Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation released on December 19 the first photos of two tiger cubs and their mother in Slap Phra Wildlife Sanctuary, Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand.
Mana Permpool, Director of Wildlife Conservation Division, Regional Office 3 (Ban Pong), announced that the discovery of tiger cubs during the installation of automatic camera traps to track the long-term tiger population in Slap Phra Wildlife Sanctuary shows the potential of the area in terms of prey abundance and the condition of the forest area conducive for tiger reproduction.
Over 420 automatic camera traps have been installed in 7 protected areas of the southern part of the Western Forest Complex (sWEFCOM) to record the population of tigers and other wild cat species, including predators, from early 2023 to date. The area is a large wildlife corridor in a dry evergreen forest and is located near a large river.
Analysis of the data from the automatic camera traps revealed that 3 tigers were photographed, an adult female listed in the tiger database under the code TWT128F, which is the mother tiger, and two cubs (with the codes SLT_Unknown003 and SLT_Unknown004).
Before this event, TWT128F was photographed in August 2023. The same camera trap also photographed an adult male tiger three times with the code HKT270M. This is the first time a cub has been photographed at Slap Phra Wildlife Sanctuary using an automatic camera trap.
Mana said that the tiger population in sWEFCOM is on the rise, especially the tigers that have been photographed for the first time in the area. This is a first step towards the success of efforts to promote this forest as another hope for restoring tiger populations in the future. Six species of wild cats have been studied in sWEFCOM, including tigers, leopards, clouded leopards, marbled cats, fire cats and fishing cats.
The installation of these cameras is part of a project to survey the distribution of wild cat species in the southern part of the Western Forest Complex of Panthera, Southeast Asia and South Asia, in collaboration with the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Slap Phra Wildlife Sanctuary, Kanchanaburi Province, and Kasetsart College, Faculty of Forestry.
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