🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Habitat suitability models incorporate prey density, human disturbance, and connectivity rather than just tree cover.
Although Peninsular Malaysia retains significant forest cover, only a fraction remains suitable for sustaining breeding Malayan tiger populations. Suitable habitat requires sufficient prey density, minimal disturbance, and connectivity to other forest blocks. Logged or degraded forests may appear intact from satellite imagery but lack ecological stability. Tigers require large continuous territories overlapping with potential mates. Fragmented patches often support only transient individuals rather than breeding pairs. Effective habitat is therefore much smaller than total forest area suggests.
💥 Impact (click to read)
This discrepancy creates a false sense of security when relying solely on percentage forest cover statistics. Even small infrastructure corridors can divide viable habitat into isolated islands. When breeding pairs cannot establish overlapping territories, reproduction declines despite apparent forest abundance.
Conservation planning increasingly focuses on functional habitat rather than raw area metrics. Preserving quality, prey-rich forest cores is essential. Without sufficient contiguous breeding zones, population recovery cannot occur regardless of nominal forest percentages.
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