Not many safe havens for the endangered big cats are safe enough, states a World Wildlife Fund assessment, posing significant challenges in increasing world tiger population to 6,000 by 2022
Showing posts with label Tiger conservation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tiger conservation. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
in the ambience of a tiger habitat
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| The Walk-Shop led by the agriculture minister, Lyonpo Pema Gyamtsho, PIC: MOAF |
It was first in JDNP that pictorial evidences confirmed the presence of tigers as high as 4,670 meters above sea level
Monday, January 24, 2011
tiger countries to finalize major conservation measures in russia next month
The upcoming tiger summit in Russia is seen as a crucial meet which may determine the future of the big cats from total extinction
Finally, after two years of consultation among the Tiger Range Countries (TRC), Bhutan and 12 other countries have finalized a global program last week for restoring the disappearing population of tigers at the Consensus for Conservation meeting held in New Delhi, India.
The Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP) will be endorsed by the representatives of the 13 TRCs at the Tiger Summit, the first of its kind to be held at St. Petersburg, Russia, next month.
If it fails to be endorsed, conservationists say it will lead to the extinction of the tiger across much of Asia. This is the only hope for the big cats roaming across Asia.
The head of the Wildlife Conservation Division, Sonam Wangchuk, who will be attending the summit, said the summit will be a success. “There is no way the summit will fail because all the TRCs have come up with their programs and are ready to work toward it,” he said.
He said the summit will jointly declare the commitment to save the tiger.
The GTRP is supported by 13 parallel National Tiger Recovery Programs. According to the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), the GTPR has a high probability of success because all 13 TRCs are working together with a high level of political commitment to implement a comprehensive program which will be supported and closely monitored by the global conservation community.
Bhutan’s tiger recovery and conservation program has four priority components.
1. Habitat and species conservation
Although Bhutan’s constitution mandates it to maintain 60% forest cover and about 51% of the country is within protected areas and biological corridors, surveys in the past decade indicated that a significant proportion of tigers roam about outside the protected areas and biological corridors.
Therefore, a revision of the corridor system is prioritized to include important tiger habitat outside the current park-corridor system. Parks should be zoned to identify core tiger habitats, and corridors should be clearly designated and identified to enforce rules and regulations that govern land-use and land-management.
2. Integrating tiger conservation and rural livelihoods
While people in Bhutan live in the protected areas and corridors, and use forest resources for everyday use and livelihoods, living within the tiger habitats has various opportunity costs like livestock depredation.
Therefore, compensation in the form of alternative income generation, insurance for depredation, conservation payments, etc. are prioritized to elicit support for biodiversity conservation and community stewardship.
3. Building institutional capacity
The current human resource capabilities are inadequate to carry out scientific conservation of key species of special concern.
Linkages among the different units of the Department of Forests and Park Services (DoFPS) are inadequate or non-existent, and no single unit has a clear mandate to coordinate the national park and wildlife protection services in the country.
These shortcomings are prioritized to be rectified for more effective conservation and protection of tigers and tiger habitats.
4. Sustainable Financing
Tiger conservation will be greatly expedited if sustainable fund is available. Therefore, a sustainable financing mechanism will be developed, incorporating innovative fund sources to allow for planning, implementing, and achieving ambitious and long-term conservation goals.
Challenges
However, various challenges are foreseen. According to the WWF, tigers could be extinct within 12 years. In the last century, illegal hunting, a shrinking habitat and the trade of tiger parts used in oriental medicine had sent the number of the big cats worldwide plunging 97% to around just 3,200 tigers today.
New trends are also emerging challenging the conservation efforts. Recently, hidden camera footage in Indonesia revealed forest destruction for illegal palm oil plantations. In Singapore officials seized several tiger skins that were advertised for sale online. At the Panna Reserve in India, two young restocked tigers were found missing.
Back at home, the human conflict with the wild cats continues to be a concern. For example, last month, a tiger killed a man at Dorji goenpa in Trongsa.
Today, there are around 1,800 tigers in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, 450 in Sumatra, 400 in Malaysia, 350 spread throughout Southeast Asia and around 450 in Russia. Bhutan has an estimated tiger population of 67-81 tigers. The 13 tiger range countries are: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Finally, after two years of consultation among the Tiger Range Countries (TRC), Bhutan and 12 other countries have finalized a global program last week for restoring the disappearing population of tigers at the Consensus for Conservation meeting held in New Delhi, India.
The Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP) will be endorsed by the representatives of the 13 TRCs at the Tiger Summit, the first of its kind to be held at St. Petersburg, Russia, next month.
If it fails to be endorsed, conservationists say it will lead to the extinction of the tiger across much of Asia. This is the only hope for the big cats roaming across Asia.
The head of the Wildlife Conservation Division, Sonam Wangchuk, who will be attending the summit, said the summit will be a success. “There is no way the summit will fail because all the TRCs have come up with their programs and are ready to work toward it,” he said.
He said the summit will jointly declare the commitment to save the tiger.
The GTRP is supported by 13 parallel National Tiger Recovery Programs. According to the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), the GTPR has a high probability of success because all 13 TRCs are working together with a high level of political commitment to implement a comprehensive program which will be supported and closely monitored by the global conservation community.
Bhutan’s tiger recovery and conservation program has four priority components.
1. Habitat and species conservation
Although Bhutan’s constitution mandates it to maintain 60% forest cover and about 51% of the country is within protected areas and biological corridors, surveys in the past decade indicated that a significant proportion of tigers roam about outside the protected areas and biological corridors.
Therefore, a revision of the corridor system is prioritized to include important tiger habitat outside the current park-corridor system. Parks should be zoned to identify core tiger habitats, and corridors should be clearly designated and identified to enforce rules and regulations that govern land-use and land-management.
2. Integrating tiger conservation and rural livelihoods
While people in Bhutan live in the protected areas and corridors, and use forest resources for everyday use and livelihoods, living within the tiger habitats has various opportunity costs like livestock depredation.
Therefore, compensation in the form of alternative income generation, insurance for depredation, conservation payments, etc. are prioritized to elicit support for biodiversity conservation and community stewardship.
3. Building institutional capacity
The current human resource capabilities are inadequate to carry out scientific conservation of key species of special concern.
Linkages among the different units of the Department of Forests and Park Services (DoFPS) are inadequate or non-existent, and no single unit has a clear mandate to coordinate the national park and wildlife protection services in the country.
These shortcomings are prioritized to be rectified for more effective conservation and protection of tigers and tiger habitats.
4. Sustainable Financing
Tiger conservation will be greatly expedited if sustainable fund is available. Therefore, a sustainable financing mechanism will be developed, incorporating innovative fund sources to allow for planning, implementing, and achieving ambitious and long-term conservation goals.
Challenges
However, various challenges are foreseen. According to the WWF, tigers could be extinct within 12 years. In the last century, illegal hunting, a shrinking habitat and the trade of tiger parts used in oriental medicine had sent the number of the big cats worldwide plunging 97% to around just 3,200 tigers today.
New trends are also emerging challenging the conservation efforts. Recently, hidden camera footage in Indonesia revealed forest destruction for illegal palm oil plantations. In Singapore officials seized several tiger skins that were advertised for sale online. At the Panna Reserve in India, two young restocked tigers were found missing.
Back at home, the human conflict with the wild cats continues to be a concern. For example, last month, a tiger killed a man at Dorji goenpa in Trongsa.
Today, there are around 1,800 tigers in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, 450 in Sumatra, 400 in Malaysia, 350 spread throughout Southeast Asia and around 450 in Russia. Bhutan has an estimated tiger population of 67-81 tigers. The 13 tiger range countries are: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
roaring to save tigers
Thirteen tiger range countries including Bhutan met in Bali, Indonesia for the three-day Pre-Tiger Summit Partners Dialogue this week and agreed on a rescue declaration to save tigers from extinction.
The summit’s declaration will be further discussed at the Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg in Russia from September 15 to 18, later this year. The Global Tiger Recovery Program is based on national plans developed by the tiger range countries (TRCs).
According to the WWF Tiger program leader, Michael Baltzer, individual governments have come with strong national plans to help tigers recover in numbers in their countries, but they cannot do it by themselves.
“These governments now must collectively lay the groundwork for a global plan to save wild tigers ahead of the Tiger Summit in Russia,” he said.
According to WWF, the wild population of tigers of all species in the world has fallen from about 100,000 to an estimated 3,200 over the past century and early estimates suggest that the cost of implementing the global tiger project will be more than US$ 350mn and even more if the target of doubling tiger numbers within 12 years is to be met.
According to a draft national tiger recovery program, Bhutan is unique in having tigers at an altitude of 4,100 meters. Bhutan also has plans to monitor cross border movement of tigers and establish cross border administrative coordination mechanisms for joint petrol and policing for wildlife trade.
Threats to the tiger include massive habitat fragmentation and destruction, loss of prey, poaching and illegal trade. Tigers are also lost due to retaliatory killing when they come into conflict with villagers living around tiger habitats.
To protect tigers, WWF and Bhutanese wildlife authorities are working together to establish anti-poaching units and strengthen anti-poaching law enforcement. In addition to poaching, WWF and its partners are addressing human-wildlife conflict by setting up a compensation fund for local farmers whose livestock are often killed by tigers.
Tigers found at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Park in Bhutan are shorter with bushy fur and a facial structure that resemble the Siberian Tiger of Russia. This, according to the Nature Conservation Division’s chief forestry officer, Dr Sonam Wangyel, could be because of a natural adaption or a level of inbreeding taking place.
However, in the absence of a nationwide tiger survey in Bhutan it is difficult to know with certainty where tigers are found in the country. But sightings have been reported in various protected areas.
This pre-meeting is a follow up to earlier governmental meetings on tiger conservation. The first in Kathmandu, Nepal in October last year, recommended a series of 15 global actions that needed to be taken to change the trajectory of tigers from extinction to recovery, as well as commitments from several tiger range countries.
The Kathmandu meeting was followed by the first Asian ministerial conference on tiger conservation held in Hua Hin, Thailand, in January 2010, and which adopted the goal of doubling the number of wild tigers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.
Other 12 countries who attended the meet were Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.
World tiger experts and representatives from NGOs, the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI)/World Bank, and donor agencies such as USAID, AUSAID and GEF were some of the participants.
The summit’s declaration will be further discussed at the Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg in Russia from September 15 to 18, later this year. The Global Tiger Recovery Program is based on national plans developed by the tiger range countries (TRCs).
According to the WWF Tiger program leader, Michael Baltzer, individual governments have come with strong national plans to help tigers recover in numbers in their countries, but they cannot do it by themselves.
“These governments now must collectively lay the groundwork for a global plan to save wild tigers ahead of the Tiger Summit in Russia,” he said.
According to WWF, the wild population of tigers of all species in the world has fallen from about 100,000 to an estimated 3,200 over the past century and early estimates suggest that the cost of implementing the global tiger project will be more than US$ 350mn and even more if the target of doubling tiger numbers within 12 years is to be met.
According to a draft national tiger recovery program, Bhutan is unique in having tigers at an altitude of 4,100 meters. Bhutan also has plans to monitor cross border movement of tigers and establish cross border administrative coordination mechanisms for joint petrol and policing for wildlife trade.
Threats to the tiger include massive habitat fragmentation and destruction, loss of prey, poaching and illegal trade. Tigers are also lost due to retaliatory killing when they come into conflict with villagers living around tiger habitats.
To protect tigers, WWF and Bhutanese wildlife authorities are working together to establish anti-poaching units and strengthen anti-poaching law enforcement. In addition to poaching, WWF and its partners are addressing human-wildlife conflict by setting up a compensation fund for local farmers whose livestock are often killed by tigers.
Tigers found at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Park in Bhutan are shorter with bushy fur and a facial structure that resemble the Siberian Tiger of Russia. This, according to the Nature Conservation Division’s chief forestry officer, Dr Sonam Wangyel, could be because of a natural adaption or a level of inbreeding taking place.
However, in the absence of a nationwide tiger survey in Bhutan it is difficult to know with certainty where tigers are found in the country. But sightings have been reported in various protected areas.
This pre-meeting is a follow up to earlier governmental meetings on tiger conservation. The first in Kathmandu, Nepal in October last year, recommended a series of 15 global actions that needed to be taken to change the trajectory of tigers from extinction to recovery, as well as commitments from several tiger range countries.
The Kathmandu meeting was followed by the first Asian ministerial conference on tiger conservation held in Hua Hin, Thailand, in January 2010, and which adopted the goal of doubling the number of wild tigers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.
Other 12 countries who attended the meet were Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.
World tiger experts and representatives from NGOs, the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI)/World Bank, and donor agencies such as USAID, AUSAID and GEF were some of the participants.
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