KANCHANABURI, Thailand — Following the path of the tiger isn’t easy. Yet the three rangers, clad in camouflage, move lithely through the steep bamboo thicket, tracking the muddy hoofprints of a sambar deer. Out of the snagging vines, they emerge on a forested ridgeline overlooking a landscape that swells and shrinks in watercolor hues of indigo. A breeze rustles the stone oak trees as the sound of grasshoppers pierces the silence.
It’s easy to imagine the tiger slinking confidently across this terrain, the master of its Thai kingdom. Another 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) down the ridge, the rangers stop in a small clearing. Members of Panthera, a wildcat conservation NGO, pull out a toolkit to check two camera traps. It was here, in early 2024, that a camera picked up a female Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) moving through this protected corridor known as Si Sawat.
She had never been detected in any other protected area. Maybe, they say, the tiger will have returned in the past three months. But the camera’s memory card reveals only smaller species: a leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) and an Asian golden cat (Catopuma temminckii), as well as a porcupine (Hystrix brachyura) and a pig-tailed macaque (Macaca leonina).
Still, the team is in good spirits. Hopefully, they say, the tiger has taken up residency to the south, in Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary. After all, this swath of forest is too small to support a large tiger population — maybe four, at best. Yet as a corridor,...This article was originally published on Mongabay
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