Meet Gusti and Dari, the two Sumatran Tigers who’ve been brought to the Memphis Zoo to save their species!
With less than 250 left in the wild and only about 500 left in the world, Sumatran Tigers are critically endangered—and The Memphis Zoo has been chosen as a home for these new Bluff City big cats with hopes of expanding the population through a breeding program called the Species Survival Plan (SSP).
Founded in 1906, the Memphis Zoo is now home to 3,500+ animals representing over 500 different species.
Sumatran Tigers are the smallest of the tiger subspecies, native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, for which habitat loss and poaching have been the two biggest threats to their livelihood.
The SSP is a formally and scientifically managed program put in place to create an optimally sustainable population across facilities in the North America, Europe, Australasia. Sumatran tigers are one of the rare species that are managed globally in zoos and related firms, and Memphis is honored to be a part of the conservation effort to save them from extinction.
The two tigers will be slowly introduced to one another when the local keepers decide they are ready. If introductions are successful, you can look forward to seeing these two on exhibit with one another in the future!
