Hetty, according to her guardian, doesn’t like males.
Pacing restlessly up and down her small chamber, she occasionally tries to catch a sniff of the scent from the visitors who have come up the path to her block.
At just 15, Hetty is already considered too old to be a mother but it’s not her reproductive health that’s causing problems.
“According to the veterinarian, she’s perfectly fine. Her reproductive system is functioning well. It’s just her individual personality. She doesn’t like males,” explains her caretaker, assistant wildlife officer Nik Mohd Zamani Awang.
Named after the veterinarian who attended to her birth at the Malacca Zoo, Hetty is one of 22 tigers making up Malaysia’s ambitious tiger breeding and rewilding programme at the National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Sungkai, Perak (NWRC).
But this is where, tucked behind a series of nondescript buildings and shaded by tall forest trees, a bold project by the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) is taking place.
It is here that wildlife authorities are hoping to breed some of Malaysia’s last tigers and, hopefully, with the birth of new cubs, eventually rewild the Pantera tigris jacksoni in our jungle.
The programme is also Malaysia’s last battle to save the subspecies, which is not only in danger from poachers, encroaching development and conflict with humans but also diseases like canine distemper spread from pets.
The privately-run Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa is about the only other project attempting to breed and rewild tigers, specifically the South China subspecies.
Taking centrestage
When the NWRC was first set up in 2013, it only had five blocks housing 20 tigers relocated from the Malacca Zoo; today, it holds some 400 animals from 36 different species.
“The centre has three objectives: rescue, rehabilitation and release,” explains its head, Dr David Magintan, adding that there are currently nine male tigers and 13 females at the centre.
They are a motley bunch of captive-born, wild-caught and even seized from poachers or those keeping the animals illegally without a Perhilitan permit. Sadly, not all the tigers are suitable for breeding as some are either too old or juvenile, ill or even hybrids from other subspecies such as Bengal or Indochinese tigers, says Dr Magintan.
“We lack male tigers at NWRC. We have only three really healthy male Malayan tigers.
“Because a tiger is an apex predator, a female can tell if a male is infirm with cataracts or joint issues and will not mate with it.
“Those born in captivity will also lack experience and this is a problem when we try to mate them,” he says.
Because tigers are by nature solitary animals, the male and female tigers are placed in adjoining stalls for about three months to see if they can get along with each other. This is important as tigers can be killed during mating attempts if the animals are not habituated with each other.
According to Nik Mohd Zamani, sometimes, despite displaying interest behaviour in the male, such as low pitch vocalisation, rubbing against the bars of the stalls and rolling on the ground, an inexperienced female tiger might incorrectly move to the front during copulation.
“One tiger took three months – or cycles of being on heat – before it successfully mated,” he says.
The mating process usually takes place over a period of around five to seven days, after which it’s a matter of patience and observation to see if there is any good news.
“If the mating isn’t successful, the female will be on heat again for her next cycle in the subsequent month,” says Nik Mohd Zamani, indicating a pair, the female Tanjung and male Yeop Tapah, in a nearby stall.
“Breeding large carnivores is not easy. Domestic cats, now, that’s easy,” he chuckles.
Tiger cubs are born after a gestation period of between 112 and 115 days and – unlike the breeding programme involving giant pandas in China – left for the mother tigers in the NWRC to rear.
By a year or two old, the cubs are separated from their mothers to get the female tigers back on heat.
Tanjung and Yeop Tapah – named after the places where they were caught after running into conflict with residents – have successfully bred before, with Tanjung giving birth to a cub in 2020. Sadly, the cub did not survive.
Tanjung’s other cub, Sungkai, born in 2014 from her pairing with a legendary tiger called Scarface, killed a female tiger during a mating session some years earlier.
Wild things
The male tiger, he says, still retains much of the nature inherited from his wild-caught parents and is thus considered a prime candidate for successful rewilding.
“When he sees humans passing by his stall, he would charge at them. That’s a good thing. Tigers are wildlife, they are not pets,” Nik Mohd Zamani points out.
Studies indicate that a wild male tiger’s roaming territory may be as expansive as 300sq km; at the NWRC, however, Sungkai will have to be content for now with an exercise yard measuring only 50m by 50m.
This is where Sungkai takes turns with other tigers to be let out and where he is trained to hunt down animals that he would normally prey on in the wild.
So far, Sungkai, Nik Mohd Zamani is happy to report, has been quite the star pupil, successfully hunting and killing wild boars let loose in the enclosure for him.
“At first we gave him a live goat. He chased after it and bit it on the rump but left the prey still alive. This shouldn’t be the case.
“So for his second time, we smeared blood on the prey animal’s throat like how a serow (wild goat) would look like. He managed to make a proper kill by the third try,” he explains.
Slowly, Sungkai graduated from killing goats to small wild boars. In 2020, he killed his first adult wild boar – in the jungle it would be one of a tiger’s top prey animals besides the sambar deer and the serow.
Nik Mohd Zamani hopes to have three breeding pairs, including Sungkai, to be taken later to the 40ha National Tiger Conservation Centre in Lanchang, Pahang, where the next step in the rewilding process begins.
Located near the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary and costing some RM15mil, the centre – according to reports in 2019 – was on track for completion and operation by that year end.
Held captive
Sadly for Hetty, though, she will most likely live out her life in captivity, and it's a life that can last up to 25 years.
As she rushes up to her cage door and snarls when he calls out to her, Nik Mohd Zamani explains that apart from being too old to breed, Hetty is also too tame and accustomed to humans.
“Hetty has undergone the rewilding process before and had no problems hunting down the pigs and goats we gave her.
“But because she was born in captivity and is used to the presence of humans, once released, she continued to treat humans as ‘friends’ whereas wild tigers treat humans as enemies,” he says.
But Nik Mohd Zamani isn’t about to give up yet on playing the matchmaker for Hetty.
“We have to alternate between the different male tigers,” he says hopefully.
Follow the National Parks and Wildlife Department (Perhilitan) to find out how Hetty, Sungkai and the breeding and rewilding of the tigers are doing on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
StarLifestyle will be running a series of articles on the conservation of Malayan tigers in conjunction with the Year of the Tiger. Join us as we report on the race to save from extinction the magnificent animal that is on our national crest .
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