Didik Raharyono hurried into the cave that local villagers claimed was home to a Javan tiger. Armed with a video camera, he carefully looked for any signs that suggest existence of tiger: feces, footprints, hair and leftovers – anything. After two hours, he came out with fecal matter and some pieces of bones he believed were good signs that proved the local villagers claim.
Didik Raharyono is obsessed with finding hard evidence to prove his belief that the Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) still exists although it was officially declared extinct in the 1980s. The official pronouncement was confirmed by the WWF after it completed its research in Meru Betiri National Park, East Java, in 1994. He remains in great doubt about all the conclusions that the beast is extinct and is determined to conduct his own research with Yayasan Kappala Indonesia.
His curiosity was also driven by the fact that the government ignored local people’s apparent sighting of the tiger. To make sure that what the villagers saw were the real thing, Didik asks specific questions about the animal. To his surprise, the self-proclaimed poachers have also given him tiger parts as “gifts”: teeth, skin or whiskers of the tigers they had killed some months or years ago. When he met with the poachers, Didik also tries to “lecture” them about the need for wildlife conservation.
After five years, Didik has collected strong evidence to strengthen his belief that the tiger still exists in Java. The evidence in his collection are bits of hair, skin, footprints, teeth, feces and eyewitnesses’ accounts. He has written and co-authored a number of scientific reports about forests in Java. His theory that the hair belonged to Javan tiger has been confirmed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).
His curiosity was also driven by the fact that the government ignored local people’s apparent sighting of the tiger. To make sure that what the villagers saw were the real thing, Didik asks specific questions about the animal. To his surprise, the self-proclaimed poachers have also given him tiger parts as “gifts”: teeth, skin or whiskers of the tigers they had killed some months or years ago. When he met with the poachers, Didik also tries to “lecture” them about the need for wildlife conservation.
After five years, Didik has collected strong evidence to strengthen his belief that the tiger still exists in Java. The evidence in his collection are bits of hair, skin, footprints, teeth, feces and eyewitnesses’ accounts. He has written and co-authored a number of scientific reports about forests in Java. His theory that the hair belonged to Javan tiger has been confirmed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).
