By Joe Figel | Research coordinator
Most of you have heard about the floods and landslides that hit Sumatra the week of November 24, 2025. While those of us in the United States were enjoying our Thanksgiving Holiday meals, Sumatra was battered by its worst climate calamity since the 2004 Tsunami.
The devastation is horrendous. Hutan Harimau had ranger crews in the forest and, distressingly, we were unable to hear from everyone until very recently. Communication was complicated by ruined infrastructure, including cell towers. All indications point to lost equipment, destroyed research stations and – more worrisome – traumatized communities in our study areas.
Despite this climate emergency, there is some good news to report. Two weeks before the storms, Hutan Harimau presented our work to an audience of 400+ at Universitas Syiah Kuala, one of the leading universities in Sumatra. This outreach comes on the heels of continued documentation of tiger populations (including cubs!) in both Aceh and, more recently, in West Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park (KSNP). The Aceh results were released last week in a publication: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/conservation-science/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2025.1691233/full
Meanwhile, the KSNP monitoring will continue in 2026 as preliminary results are analyzed. Hutan Harimau also continues to document and manage incidences of human-tiger conflicts, which remain one of the greatest threats to Sumatran tigers.
More updates to come in early 2026.
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