Project Harimau

I will not exaggerate when I write that I have been waiting for this chance for not long weeks, not months, but years.

In the extreme "Covid" era, I decided to take a risk and overcome all the pitfalls that accompanied the preparations and the journey itself, and set out for my "striped dream" in Sumatra. For many years, I was attracted by the idea of ​​taking one of the few high-resolution photos of the Sumatran tiger(Panthera tigris sumatrae)!

Practically from the beginning of my efforts with this somewhat alternative photography technique, I have been in contact with the Czech-Indonesian non-profit Justice For Nature, which buys (*past) land originally covered with rubber plantations in Sumatra and gradually restores (*past) the face of a real and irreplaceable rainforest on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park. Their other activities include (*past) relatively extensive monitoring of animals, which are slowly but surely returning to these areas, and the tiger is one of them, and in May 2021 I finally installed my four special camera traps, to which I will return in a few months and see if they were successful or not. (*Currently, this organization no longer "operates" in Sumatra and the above activities are unfortunately a thing of the past)

I returned in March of the following year and collected the remains of no longer functioning traps - mostly fortunately only because of the discharged batteries. I decided to leave two sets in the border zone of NP G.Leuser and take the remaining two to the area of Hadabuan Hill, where a real expert of the Sumatran tigers and the rainforest itself - Haray Sam Munthe - will help me with the setup.

After 315 days from installation, two news came from Sumatra - good and bad. The good is that the tiger came ... the bad one, that he came from wrong direction.

After a long time, I returned to Sumatra in March 2024 - I brought the equipment after renovation and installed in 3 places right in the Gunung Leuser National Park - I finally got this done and with a valid permit I worked directly in the kingdom of the Sumatran tiger with the NP rangers!!!

In September 2024 I arrived for the first check-up... 2 traps non-functional and totally destroyed by moisture and termites... one "setup" still partially worked. While browsing the images on the hard-to-read display of an old Canon SLR, my breath stopped and my heart rate increased brutally... the subsequent "roar of celebration" must have been heard all the way to Jakarta...