Video of tiger in Sabah dismissed as fake

A screengrab of the tiger resting in an oil palm plantation.

KOTA KINABALU: Wildlife officials have dismissed as fake yet another video on social media claiming that a tiger was sighted in Sabah.

The Malayan Tiger is not indigenous in the wild to Borneo and is only found in the peninsula.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said the video was not real and had been edited.

“The video was taken in Peninsular Malaysia but I don’t have any detail where it was taken,” he said yesterday.

Tuuga pointed out that this was not the first video that had gone viral claiming that a tiger was seen in Sabah, with the last one surfacing in 2018 of a so-called sighting along Jalan Kalabakan-Tawau in the east coast.

He said tigers were not indigenous in the wild to Sabah.

“Not even on Borneo island,” he said, adding that the only tigers in Sabah were found at the Lok Kawi wildlife park, about 20km from the city.

In the 27-second clip which made the rounds on Saturday, a man can be heard warning people to be careful of a tiger as he drove past and caught the animal resting in what looked like an oil palm estate, presumably with his handphone camera.

He claimed that the tiger was spotted in the Sipitang district, some 140km southwest of the state capital.

Tuuga said the only wild cats in the state were, among others, the clouded leopard, which was about the size of domestic cats.

He said one way to halt such videos was to take legal action against those who came up with them but it was difficult to trace the culprits, especially if these were spread through WhatsApp.

On Saturday, former state health minister Datuk Frankie Poon had also issued a statement urging the public to ignore the video.

Poon, who is Tanjong Papat assemblyman, said he had checked the authenticity of the claim and urged the public to ignore the video.