The Tragic Tale of the Malay Tapir
A Wildlife Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Fauna & Flora International
Facebook posting, January 27, 2022

Please help save Malay tapirs. They are running out of time, but if everyone reading this donates just $3 you could help clear snares and traps. Go to Fauna & Flora International to donate! Thank you.

“Kerinci is probably the most important place in the world for wild Malay tapir right now. It is troubling that one of the largest mammals in Southeast Asia has just slipped under most people’s radar.”

Of all the weird and wonderful animals on Earth there’s not one quite like the Malay tapir. Most closely related to horses and rhinos, tapirs are utterly adorable. They are as harmless as they look, and it has been said that if you scratch a tapir in the right place, they will lie down in total bliss.
And their penchant for lying down extends to their main defence mechanism - their black and white fur makes a sleeping tapir look indistinguishable from a large, round rock, covered in shadows from the trees above.

This fools predators with remarkable efficacy. But there’s one thing they can’t fool: snares.

Malay tapirs have terrible eyesight and their size is tremendous, so as they clumsily forage through the forest undergrowth they smash down trails which are used by all manner of creatures - even mighty Sumatran tigers.

But those trails have become flooded with tiger snares.

The tapirs - poorly sighted and practically defenceless - stand no chance against them./p>

These glorious, unique, wonderful creatures are falling in their thousands. Their population is being shredded - sometimes literally - by snares that weren’t even set for them in the first place.

All it takes is one misstep. And once they stumble into a snare, only one thing awaits them.

Pain.

Horrific, agonising pain.

The more the tapirs struggle and try to pull free, the more the snare will tighten, becoming more and more unbearable by the minute. This agony can last for hours and is almost certainly a death sentence.

And it gets worse. So heartbreakingly worse.

It’s all for nothing.

Tapir meat is considered forbidden by most local people so when discovered their bodies are simply discarded. Tossed aside.

There are now fewer than 2,500 Malay tapirs left on the planet.

We need to stop this. The slaughter has to end - before it brings about the end of the tapirs.
Through your donations and the help of park authorities, FFI is training rangers to find and remove these brutal traps in Kerinci Seblat National Park, helping to save tapirs and any other wildlife that passes along these trails.

Tapir populations can take a long time to recover, so we must act soon. But, with your support, we can start to make a crucial difference in keeping these forests safe for the magnificent Malay tapir.
With your help, we can save the last 2,500.

Please help save Malay tapirs. They are running out of time, but if everyone reading this donates just $3 you could help clear the snares and leave the tapirs free to roam the forest in peace. Go HERE  to donate!

Thank you.

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