Bali Tiger
Panthera tigris (Bali population; historically P. t. balica, now often included in P. t. sondaica)
The Bali tiger was a small island population of tiger endemic to Bali, hunted and squeezed into extinction; the last confirmed animal was a female shot on 27 September 1937, and the population was gone by about the 1950s.
Updated 25 July 2026
- Last confirmed specimen
- Female shot 27 September 1937, Sumbar Kima
- Extinction window
- Likely 1940s–1950s
- Island
- Bali, Indonesia only
- Size
- Smallest historical tiger form — females often cited around 65–80 kg
- Modern taxonomy
- Often folded into Panthera tigris sondaica with Javan and Sumatran tigers
- Reserve timing
- West Bali protection declared 1941 — after last confirmed kill
The Bali tiger was the smallest of the historical tiger forms and the first island tiger population erased in modern times. Confined to Bali, it never had the demographic buffer of a continental subspecies. Hunting intensified after colonial rule tightened in the early twentieth century, and forest gave way to farms on an island with little room to spare. The last confirmed specimen, an adult female, was shot on 27 September 1937 in west Bali. A game reserve followed in 1941 — too late. By the 1950s the population was gone. Unconfirmed sightings trickled on for years, as they often do after the last skin is taken.
Key facts at a glance
- The Bali tiger was endemic to one small island and had no escape once hunting and clearance intensified.
- The last confirmed animal was shot on 27 September 1937.
- A reserve created in 1941 came after the documented population had already collapsed.
- Modern taxonomy often treats Bali, Javan and Sumatran tigers as one Sunda subspecies — two of those island populations are already gone.
- Small-island carnivores are lost faster than continental ones because every hectare cleared is a larger share of the range.
- Sumatran tigers remain the last Sunda island tigers — the living end of the same lineage.
An island population with no margin
Bali is small. A tiger population there was always limited by prey and forest area. When rifles and land conversion arrived together, the arithmetic was simple: each adult killed was a measurable fraction of the whole, and each clearing removed hunting ground that could not be replaced elsewhere on the island. Continental tigers can lose a valley and retain another. Island tigers cannot.
Hunting until the skins ran out
Photographs and trophy records from the 1910s and 1920s show Bali tigers killed as prizes. The last confirmed animal, a female at Sumbar Kima on 27 September 1937, entered the record as a specimen at the end of that process. Later sightings in the 1940s and 1950s were never backed by a collected animal. When a large predator leaves no verified trace for years on a densely inhabited island, extinction is the working conclusion.
Taxonomy after the fact
Older lists treated the Bali tiger as its own subspecies, Panthera tigris balica. A 2017 revision of felid taxonomy grouped Bali and Javan tigers with the living Sumatran tiger under P. t. sondaica. That change does not resurrect Bali's animals. It underlines that the Sunda island tigers were one connected story — and that only Sumatra still holds wild tigers in that chain.
Where it lived
Island of Bali, Indonesia — found nowhere else
The last one
An adult female shot on 27 September 1937 at Sumbar Kima, west Bali — the last confirmed specimen
What caused it
- 1 Trophy and control hunting after Dutch colonial expansion
- 2 Conversion of forest to agriculture on a small island
- 3 Naturally tiny population constrained by Bali's area
- 4 Protection arriving too late — a reserve declared in 1941 after the last confirmed kill
What this extinction teaches
Island tiger populations vanish when hunting and habitat loss coincide, and paperwork for reserves does not help if it arrives after the last confirmed kill. Sumatran tigers are the remaining Sunda island population under the same pressures.
Still here — for now
Still facing the same pressure: Tiger
The Sumatran tiger is the last Sunda island tiger population — still facing poaching and forest loss on a finite island, the Bali problem before the ending.
IUCN status: Endangered
Did you know
West Bali's first game reserve was created in 1941 to protect tigers that, on the evidence of specimens, had already been shot out of confirmed existence four years earlier.