Posted on 25 January
2011 - Asia's tiger reserves could support
more than 10,000 wild tigers – three times
the current number – if they are managed
as large-scale landscapes that allow for
connectivity between core breeding sites,
a new paper from some of the world’s leading
conservation scientists finds.
The study, co-authored
by WWF scientists, is the first assessment
of the political commitment made by all
13 tiger range countries at November’s historic
tiger summit to double the tiger population
across Asia by 2022.
“A Landscape-Based Conservation
Strategy to Double the Wild Tiger Population”
in the current issue of Conservation Letters,
finds that the commitment to double tiger
numbers is not only possible, but can be
exceeded. However, it will take a global
effort to ensure that core breeding reserves
are maintained and connected via habitat
corridors.
“In the midst of a crisis,
it’s tempting to circle the wagons and only
protect a limited number of core protected
areas, but we can and should do better,”
said Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Chief Scientist
at WWF and a co-author of the study.
“We absolutely need
to stop the bleeding, the poaching of tigers
and their prey in core breeding areas, but
we need to go much further and secure larger
tiger landscapes before it is too late.”
Wild tiger numbers have
declined from about 100,000 in the early
1900s to as few as 3,200 today due to poaching
of tigers and their prey, habitat destruction
and human/tiger conflict. Most of the remaining
tigers are scattered in small, isolated
pockets across their range in 13 Asian countries.
“Tiger conservation
is the face of biodiversity conservation
and competent sustainable land-use management
at the landscape level,” said study co-author
Dr. John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian
Conservation Biology Institute.
“By saving the tiger
we save all the plants and animals that
live under the tiger’s umbrella.”
Past examples show that
an increase in tiger numbers is possible
The authors found that
the 20 priority tiger conservation landscapes
with the highest probability of long-term
tiger survival could support more than 10,500
tigers, including about 3,400 breeding females.
They also looked at historical examples
to prove that a doubling or tripling is
possible using large landscapes:
In the jungles of lowland
Nepal, tiger numbers crashed during civil
conflict from 2002 to 2006. However, tigers
did not disappear because Nepal and India’s
tiger reserves are linked by forest corridors,
which likely allowed for replenishment from
India;
In the Russian Far East tigers, almost disappeared
in the 1940s but the region was re-populated
by tigers moving in from northeastern China.
Recently designated habitat corridors across
the Sino-Russia border are helping tigers
re-establish themselves in China’s Changbaishan
mountains, where they had disappeared in
the 11000s.
In India’s Nagarahole National Park, tiger
numbers are “healthy and resilient” because
the park is connected to other reserves
in the region. Tigers number almost 300
in this large landscape of connected parks
and reserves.
And population declines are also possible
without connectivity between habitats
In contrast, the authors
point to two of India’s premier tiger reserves
to show how lack of connectivity can preclude
tiger population recovery. Tigers disappeared
from Sariska and Panna tiger reserves in
2005 and 2009 due to poaching and were not
able to re-colonize because these reserves
are not connected to other reserves through
habitat corridors. Consequently, wild tigers
had to be translocated into these reserves
to attempt to re-establish populations.
Besides poaching and
habitat loss, the $7.5 trillion in infrastructure
projects like roads, dams and mines that
will be invested in Asia over the next decade
threatens tiger landscapes. A focus only
on core sites and protected areas like reserves,
instead of larger landscapes, could be seen
by developers and politicians as a green
light to move forward with harmful infrastructure
projects outside of core sites.
“Without strong countervailing
pressures, short-term economic gains will
inevitably trump protection of the critical
ecosystems necessary for sustainable development,”
said Keshav Varma, Program Director of the
Global Tiger Initiative at the World Bank.
The authors insist that
conservationists and governments must be
involved in helping design infrastructure
projects to mitigate their impacts on tigers
both inside core sites and in current and
potential forest corridors. A recently built
oil depot in India’s Terai Arc, for example,
severed a vital elephant and tiger corridor.
Conservationists are now in litigation to
remove the depot. Early intervention could
have avoided this.
"Following the
St. Petersburg Declaration, Nepal has committed
to the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers
across our country by 2022,” said Deepak
Bohara, Nepal’s Minister for Forests and
Soil Conservation.
“This analysis shows
that it can be done, not just in Nepal,
but, if done right with careful study and
planning, across the entire tiger range.
It is also worth noting that the tiger conservation
provides carbon credits, protects water
resources, and complements community development
efforts. Thus, it is important to promote
regional cooperation to maintain a healthy
tiger corridor between different reserves.”
