In 1902, The Wide World Magazine published a riveting account of Sultan Ibrahim of Johor—then just 28 years old—tracking, confronting, and killing tigers deep in the Malay jungle, always on foot. He refused to shoot from safety, opting instead to face charging beasts at close quarters, with a .577 Express rifle and nerves of steel.

To his audience in Britain and Malaya, these feats weren’t seen as brutality but as proof of character—an aristocrat mastering the wild through bravery and skill. Tigers were not yet endangered. They were the ultimate adversary.

Today, that legacy takes a different shape—while the bloodline continues.

Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah, the current Crown Prince of Pahang, is Sultan Ibrahim’s great great-grandson. Like his ancestor, he is tall, athletic, and forest-minded. Remarkably, both men share the same birth date—17 September—and Tengku Hassanal was named in honour of his great great-grandfather from the maternal side. But where the elder once hunted tigers with a double-barrelled Holland & Holland, the younger is hunting time.

With only around 150 Malayan tigers left in the wild, Tengku Hassanal has emerged as one of the most active conservation figures in Malaysia. In 2023, the Pahang Royal Family launched the Al-Sultan Abdullah Royal Tiger Reserve, a 1,340 km² sanctuary for the species. Within the same forests once traversed by his great-great-grandfather’s rifle, the Crown Prince now implements anti-poaching patrols, ecological research, habitat restoration, and fosters international partnerships. In 2024, the project received a €1 million grant from the European Union to bolster conservation efforts through 2025. Subsequently, in January 2025, the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund (MBZSCF) committed USD 22 million over five years to support the Al-Sultan Abdullah Royal Tiger Reserve—a landmark contribution to regional biodiversity conservation.

But there is another crucial difference between these two tiger men: their relationship to the Orang Asli, Malaysia’s Indigenous people.

A century ago, the Orang Asli were indispensable to royal hunts. They tracked game, cleared paths, and risked their lives as beaters—though rarely acknowledged in official records. Sultan Ibrahim of Johor, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, showed a degree of consideration for their well-being that was notable for his time. He preferred to rely on his own trained men rather than engage unfamiliar villagers, precisely because he recognized the danger and did not wish to be responsible for the potential loss of their lives.

Today, Tengku Hassanal’s approach goes further. The Orang Asli are not just present—they are at the core of the conservation strategy. As paid rangers, ecological monitors, and decision-making partners, they bring generational knowledge that is now recognized as essential to tiger protection. Their role has shifted from silent participants to acknowledged stewards.

This stands in stark contrast to some other parts of the world, where conservation has historically dispossessed Indigenous communities. In India, Adivasi tribes were evicted from tiger reserves like Kanha and Sariska under strict protectionist policies. In Central Africa, Baka and Batwa peoples were forcibly removed from national parks in the Congo Basin to make way for fortress-style conservation funded by foreign NGOs. These models, now widely critiqued, excluded the very communities who had long protected those ecosystems.

By contrast, Malaysia’s evolving framework—especially within the Al-Sultan Abdullah Royal Tiger Reserve—places Orang Asli communities at the centre, much like successful models in Australia’s Indigenous Protected Areas and Canada’s First Nations-led Guardian programs. These are no longer exceptions—they are emerging best practices. And Malaysia is not trailing in this effort—it is helping to define the frontier.

We cannot retroactively condemn Sultan Ibrahim. He lived in an era shaped by imperial science and extractive logic, where the natural world was seen as limitless. As the magazine itself proclaimed in 1902, “In the virgin forests of the interior of Johore there is a sufficiency of game to keep sportsmen busy for many years to come.” The assumption was clear: the jungle was endless, its bounty inexhaustible.

Ecology as a scientific discipline was still in its infancy. The dominant view, influenced by early naturalists like Alfred Russel Wallace and colonial surveyors, treated tropical forests as catalogues of species rather than fragile systems. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century—with the work of thinkers like Aldo Leopold and later Ramon Margalef—that ecology evolved into a systems science, focused on balance, interdependence, and human impact.

Tengku Hassanal is not undoing history—but he is writing its next chapter with these lessons in mind.

The environmentalist’s lens today is sharper, more systemic. We now understand that the extinction crisis facing Malayan tigers is not simply the residue of hunting—it is driven by deforestation, illegal wildlife trade, habitat fragmentation, and the breakdown of coexistence between people and wilderness. What makes Tengku Hassanal’s work significant is not merely the symbolism of royal continuity—it is his application of current ecological thinking: mobilizing transnational funding, embedding Indigenous knowledge, and building a model where people and predators might coexist again.

There is depth and sadness in this story. And there is hope, too—hope grounded in decisive action. If the roar of the tiger still echoes through the forests of Malaysia in a century’s time, it will be thanks to bold efforts like those now undertaken by the Royal Family of Pahang—rethinking, reshaping, and leading a new approach to wildlife conservation, while attracting significant international support. That is the kind of leadership and accountability the world needs more of. And one can only hope others—within Malaysia and beyond—will follow.