Last August, a shocking photo circulated. Photographs taken by the Ujung Kulon National Park Hall team showed a tiger walking calmly, leaving a bull lying. Most likely the bull had just been pounced on by the tiger.
Actually, carnivorous photos prey on other animals are common. However, it was different because the tiger being photographed was a Javanese tiger, a species that was considered extinct in 1976 ago. The photo then further thickened expectations: the Javan tiger was not extinct. Currently, the Ujung Kulon National Park team is investigating whether the animal is a Javan tiger, or another tiger species.
Java tiger habitat is indeed up and down. The species with the scientific name Panthera tigris sondaica was once a feared and respected animal in ancient Java. But, after the 1970s, Javanese tigers could only be found in fairy tales. It is only spoken by parents to their children, grandparents and grandchildren.
In the past, the Java tiger lived calmly. They have their own living area, so do humans who do not disturb the habitat of animals called "Simbah". For the people of the archipelago, tigers do occupy sacred positions. In Sumatra, tigers are called datuk. In the paper The Last Tiger in East Java: Symbolic Continuity in Ecological Change (1995), tigers in Java have various designations besides Simbah. From Grandma to Kiai. Old Javanese believe that tigers have supernatural powers.
That position continues to be maintained because humans and tigers have a different world. The Dutch writer W. Baerveldt said that forests in Java were considered a frightening and mysterious place and were shrouded in mystical power. While tigers are considered as magical animals that control the forest.
John Crawfurd in the History of Indian Archipelago (1820) said that, "tigers and jungles have a close relationship and they protect each other." People who want to disturb the forest will be afraid of the existence of tigers. Tigers will be safe in dense jungle that provides abundant food. But that position changed in the mid-19th century. When it began large-scale land clearing in Java. Enter thousands of migrants from Central Java, as well as Madura. This has a big impact, especially in terms of ecology.
"The ecological impact of this population explosion is greater than the combination of human-generated impacts on Java before," wrote Seindensticker and Suyono in the paper The Javan Tiger and the Meru Betiri Reserve: A Plan for Management (1976).
These two researchers say, throughout the 1800s to the early 1900s, there was a massive hunt for tigers. As the forests shrink and the number of people becomes increasingly crowded, the ecological balance is disrupted. Tigers that are hard to find prey, come out of the forest and eat livestock. Humans began to regard tigers as pests, not longer as respected mystical animals. In 1938, only 23 percent of forests remained on the island of Java. Seindensticker and Suyono noted, the beginning of World War II began in 1939, only a handful of tigers remained on Java.
The Javanese tiger traces were last seen in Meru Betiri National Park in 1976. In the same period, the International Union of Conservation for Nature (IUCN) raised the status of the Javanese tiger, from "Critically Endangered" to "Extinct". The Javan tiger follows the Bali Tiger which was declared extinct in 1937.