Deep in the evergreen jungle of Thailand’s Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex (DPKY-FC), a spring-loaded trap is waiting to catch a tiger.

No one knows exactly when the animal will return to mark its scent again — in a week or two, maybe longer — so the trap must be checked three times a day.

Luckily for the big cat, this trap isn’t set by poachers: it’s the work of conservationists, trying to save the species.

“It’s a lot of time and effort to trap a tiger,” says Rattapan Pattanarangsan, a conservation program manager at the nonprofit Panthera Thailand. But with just 20 to 30 tigers roaming the 6,000-square-kilometer (2,317-square-mile) DPKY-FC, this effort is essential to protecting the “last of the last” of its Indochinese tigers, a population that was only discovered in the early

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