By Peter Foster
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 30/08/2007
Peter Foster's blog
These are dark days for the Royal Bengal tiger, lord of the Indian jungle and without doubt the most mesmerising of all the great beasts of the forest. As new census figures indicate, in a few short years - perhaps a decade, maybe two - it is likely that the tiger as a truly wild animal will become extinct.
They won't all die, of course - a handful of docile and inbred examples will survive in protected forest reserves for the benefit of foreign tourists in the their safari 4x4s. But the animal that Blake used to symbolise his vengeful and pitiless God will essentially have become a tame thing, something to be gawped at in zoos and fenced-off national parks. Not real tigers, just big kitties with stripes.
How has this happened? Until quite recently, India's tigers were cited as one of the world's great conservation success stories. After India's then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, launched "Project Tiger" in 1973, tiger numbers rose steadily, from a low of 1,200 in the early 1970s to more than 3,500 a decade ago. The tiger, it seemed, was back from the brink.
It now transpires that this was a false dawn. Today, tiger numbers are back down to - at their lowest - 1,300, with leading conservationists such as Valmik Thapar predicting that the inexorable downward trend will continue.
A decade of administrative neglect - 40 per cent of Indian forest guard positions are currently vacant - and years of forest administrators cooking the books to cover up poaching losses and the endless encroachment of villages on to protected land, have put the tiger into irreversible decline.
Is it really too late? Probably, even though it seems at least that India's government has finally woken up to the crisis being faced by its national animal. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, is now backing a new "Project Tiger", doubling the tiger conservation budget, creating a new National Tiger Conservation Authority and a dedicated Wildlife Crime Bureau to tackle the poachers head on.
It would be comforting to think all this government action will bear fruit, but there are several reasons to think that Mrs Gandhi's great solo effort of 35 years ago cannot be replicated by Mr Singh. The fear among India's conservation community, based on the bitter experience of the past decade, is that all the new bureaux, authorities and central government directives will turn out to be paper tigers, not real ones. The reasons are twofold.
Since Mrs Gandhi's day, the population of India has doubled from 560 million in 1972 to 1.1 billion today. In another 35 years, that figure will be 1.5 billion. Put simply, there just isn't enough forest - the tiger's natural habitat - to go around. For most of India's rural poor, every day is a battle to survive. Competition for resources - land, water, forest - is intense and will only become more so.
The effects of this human population pressure on the tigers are already visible: India now has only three viable tiger habitats. Even more worrying is that outside India's 28 dedicated tiger reserves - where 60 per cent of India's tigers were estimated to be living in 2002 - it was found that there simply wasn't enough prey to sustain the tigers. Day by day, the overwhelming pressure of people is driving the big cats into smaller and smaller parcels of land.
The second major reason for gloom is political. While Indira Gandhi was a political demi-god, commanding vast electoral majorities and unquestionable authority, Mr Singh's position at the head of a minority coalition is altogether more mortal. Modern Indian politics is increasingly factionalised, with regional king-makers draining power from the centre every day.
It is therefore encouraging to hear that the prime minister has written personally to all of India's chief ministers, demanding they fill those forest guard vacancies; but rather less encouraging to know that three identical letters have been dispatched from New Delhi in recent times, all to no effect.
The truth is that, for all the brave talk of saving India's national animal, whether by politicians in New Delhi or by conservationists around the world, the plight of the tiger holds little sway in the places where it actually lives.
No Indian politician ever won re-election by saving a tiger. And while reserves do bring in tourist dollars, far too much of that money disappears into the pockets of the big hotel chains and the local political elite. For tribal people, scratching a living on the land, there is all too little reason to turn down the poacher's shilling.
Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/08/30/do3003.xml
Showing posts with label Tiger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tiger. Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tiger numbers at catastrophic levels.
By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 30/08/2007
There may now be as few as 1300 wild tigers left in India.
In pictures: Tigers under threat
Tiger numbers are nearly beyond saving
Tiger facts
A new scientifically-based count reveals the true extent of the catastrophic fall in tiger numbers. The last count in 2002 - based on the number of footprints found - put tiger numbers at 3,600 but this survey has now been discredited.
'If this trend continues, the wild populations will disappear from many more places'
Renowned Indian conservationist Valmik Thapar said the latest census signalled "the end of the tiger for most of India."
The Indian government is now involved in a desperate race to preserve the few tigers that are left and save the wild species from extinction.
But the signs are not hopeful and experts forecast that the wild tiger, the largest of the big cats, will disappear and in a relatively short space of time could be seen only in a few heavily-protected reserves.
The latest survey was led by Dr J VJhala - one of the few Indian wildlife biologists with an international reputation.
His team, from the Wildlife Institute of India and trained forest officers, spent 352,000 man-days sampling 21,989 forest beats, walked 132,000km of line transects and completed 330,000km of carnivore sign surveys.
They drew up maps highlighting high, medium or low density tiger areas, and set up thousands of camera traps in representative samples of each area. This enabled them to count absolute tiger populations and establish solid benchmarks so extrapolations could be made.
The final estimate of 1,300-2,200 animals does not mean that India has lost 50-60 per cent of its tigers since 2002, however, because previous counts were inaccurate and therefore not comparable.
The new census which pinpoints the tiger's few remaining strongholds, provides a realistic basis from which scientists and conservationists can work.
The findings, revealed in the latest edition of the BBC Wildlife Magazine tally with a report earlier this year in the journal BioScience which said that in 10 years tiger habitat had declined by 41 per cent.
Dr Eric Dinerstein of the World Wildlife Fund and 15 co-authors, concluded: "While the tiger as a wild species will most likely not become extinct within the next half century, its current trajectory is catastrophic.
"If this trend continues, the wild populations will disappear from many more places, or dwindle to the point of ecological extinction."
In India the tiger has been squeezed by the massive growth in the human population with the consequent loss of its traditional habitats. Lack of food has meant it has been almost impossible for the tiger to survive outside protected areas.
Poaching - fuelled by the demand for tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine - is still widespread. Two years ago the Sariskar Reserve in Rajasthan was found to be completely emptied of tigers by poachers.
The shocking discovery forced the Indian government to take action. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has taken personal control of a new and possibly final attempt to save the tiger from extinction.
He has set up a new autonomous National Tiger Conservation Authority with powers to oversee more effective management of reserves which in the past have been ineffective in protecting the dwindling number of animals.
The Prime Minister has said he wants to see results before the end of the year. Diane Walkington, head of species at WWF, said there was still time to save the tiger.
"The figures are frightening but I am hopeful. At least now we have figures that give us a proper starting point. Fortunately tigers will breed like rabbits given the right conditions. The most important thing is we connect tiger populations that are still viable.
We must extend their areas and build links to their habitats so they can migrate from one place to another. If necessary we must move wild tigers from one place to another."
She said it was vital the Indian government and conservation bodies were given international backing in their efforts to save the tiger.
Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/30/eatiger130.xml
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 30/08/2007
There may now be as few as 1300 wild tigers left in India.
In pictures: Tigers under threat
Tiger numbers are nearly beyond saving
Tiger facts
A new scientifically-based count reveals the true extent of the catastrophic fall in tiger numbers. The last count in 2002 - based on the number of footprints found - put tiger numbers at 3,600 but this survey has now been discredited.
'If this trend continues, the wild populations will disappear from many more places'
Renowned Indian conservationist Valmik Thapar said the latest census signalled "the end of the tiger for most of India."
The Indian government is now involved in a desperate race to preserve the few tigers that are left and save the wild species from extinction.
But the signs are not hopeful and experts forecast that the wild tiger, the largest of the big cats, will disappear and in a relatively short space of time could be seen only in a few heavily-protected reserves.
The latest survey was led by Dr J VJhala - one of the few Indian wildlife biologists with an international reputation.
His team, from the Wildlife Institute of India and trained forest officers, spent 352,000 man-days sampling 21,989 forest beats, walked 132,000km of line transects and completed 330,000km of carnivore sign surveys.
They drew up maps highlighting high, medium or low density tiger areas, and set up thousands of camera traps in representative samples of each area. This enabled them to count absolute tiger populations and establish solid benchmarks so extrapolations could be made.
The final estimate of 1,300-2,200 animals does not mean that India has lost 50-60 per cent of its tigers since 2002, however, because previous counts were inaccurate and therefore not comparable.
The new census which pinpoints the tiger's few remaining strongholds, provides a realistic basis from which scientists and conservationists can work.
The findings, revealed in the latest edition of the BBC Wildlife Magazine tally with a report earlier this year in the journal BioScience which said that in 10 years tiger habitat had declined by 41 per cent.
Dr Eric Dinerstein of the World Wildlife Fund and 15 co-authors, concluded: "While the tiger as a wild species will most likely not become extinct within the next half century, its current trajectory is catastrophic.
"If this trend continues, the wild populations will disappear from many more places, or dwindle to the point of ecological extinction."
In India the tiger has been squeezed by the massive growth in the human population with the consequent loss of its traditional habitats. Lack of food has meant it has been almost impossible for the tiger to survive outside protected areas.
Poaching - fuelled by the demand for tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine - is still widespread. Two years ago the Sariskar Reserve in Rajasthan was found to be completely emptied of tigers by poachers.
The shocking discovery forced the Indian government to take action. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has taken personal control of a new and possibly final attempt to save the tiger from extinction.
He has set up a new autonomous National Tiger Conservation Authority with powers to oversee more effective management of reserves which in the past have been ineffective in protecting the dwindling number of animals.
The Prime Minister has said he wants to see results before the end of the year. Diane Walkington, head of species at WWF, said there was still time to save the tiger.
"The figures are frightening but I am hopeful. At least now we have figures that give us a proper starting point. Fortunately tigers will breed like rabbits given the right conditions. The most important thing is we connect tiger populations that are still viable.
We must extend their areas and build links to their habitats so they can migrate from one place to another. If necessary we must move wild tigers from one place to another."
She said it was vital the Indian government and conservation bodies were given international backing in their efforts to save the tiger.
Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/30/eatiger130.xml
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