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© WWF Thailand
Leopard was one of the many endangered species caught by the WWF camera traps in Kuiburi National Park.
© WWF Thailand
Despite camera traps being destroyed by heavy rain, the WWF team succeeded in capturing one tiger on film.
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WWF working with park rangers from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife has recently completed a mark-recapture camera-trapping project in Kuiburi National Park.
Kuiburi National Park lies in the southernmost part of the Western Forest Complex in the Kayah Karen Tenasserim Ecoregion, which straddles the border of Myanmar and Thailand. In 2006, the area was identified as a Class 1 Tiger Conservation Landscape by WWF and other conservation organizations, which means Kuiburi and its surrounding areas have the highest probability of maintaining a tiger population in the long-term, due to the quality of the remaining habitat as well as the existing conservation measures in place.During the camera trapping exercise, 48 traps were set in three different habitat zones that were chosen based on a preliminary study of prey density conducted by the team. This study showed that the large prey that would be most likely to support a tiger population such as gaur, have been all but eliminated from Kuiburi due to hunting and poaching. Nevertheless, certain areas of the park supported a number of smaller prey species, such as deer, making those areas more likely to contain a remnant tiger population.
Although heavy and unseasonable rain damaged many of the cameras, the team managed to successfully capture images of one tiger, as well as numerous other threatened and endangered species including: Asiatic black bear, dhole, Fea's muntjac, gaur, leopard, sun bear, and a rare bird species - the crested fireback
