Asian tiger numbers could triple if large-scale landscapes are protected

The tiger reserves of Asia 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 study from some of the world's leading conservation scientists finds. The study, published in Conservation Letters, is the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries last November to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022.

The study finds that the commitment made by tiger range states in November's historic tiger summit to double the wild tiger population 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. The paper also notes that tiger landscapes can potentially "pay their way" through payment schemes for carbon storage and sequestration and other ecosystem services.

The tiger reserves of Asia 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 study finds.

"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-US. "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 Dr. John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian Conservation Research Institute. "By saving the tiger we save all the plants and animals that live under the tiger's umbrella."

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 1990s
• 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.

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 infrastructure projects outside of core sites.

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 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."

Nowhere to hide: Tigers threatened by human destruction of groundcover

The elimination of ground-level vegetation is bringing another of the world's tiger subspecies to the brink of extinction, according to Virginia Tech and World Wildlife Fund researchers.

The Sumatran tiger, native to Indonesia, could be the fourth type of tiger to disappear from the wild. This is due, in part, because of deforestation and the loss of thick groundcover, also known as understory cover, said Sunarto, lead scientist on a study that is the first to systematically investigate the use of both forests and plantation areas for tiger habitat.

Although tiger's prefer forest to plantation areas, the study found that the most important factor was that availability of thick ground-level vegetation which apparently serves as an environmental necessity for tiger habitat, regardless of location.

"As ambush hunters, tigers would find it hard to capture their prey without adequate understory cover," said Sunarto, who earned his doctorate at Virginia Tech and now is a tiger expert for the World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia (WWF-Indonesia). "The lack of cover also leaves tigers vulnerable to persecution by humans, who generally perceive them as dangerous."

Within forest areas, tigers also strongly prefer sites that have low levels of human disturbance as indicated by their preference for areas closer to forest centers and farther from human activity centers such as bodies of water and areas bordering plantations and towns.

Tigers occupy only around 7 percent of their historic range. Estimates place the current wild tiger populations at as few as 3,200 tigers, including only about 400 Sumatran tigers, which are listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

"These study results indicate that to thrive, tigers depend on the existence of large contiguous forest blocks," said study co-author Marcella Kelly, an associate professor in Virginia Tech's Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Sunarto's graduate advisor.

The Indonesian government has set aside many areas and national parks for the conservation of endangered species but about 70 percent of tiger habitat in Sumatra, an island in western Indonesia, remains outside these protected areas. The preservation of such habitats, which requires support from government, landowners, and concession holders, is critical for conservation of the species, the study authors emphasize.

A recently published Indonesian presidential decree on land use in Sumatra points out the importance of building wildlife corridors between critical areas, where commitments from concession owners are key to successful implementation.

"Even with current legal protection for the species, tigers are not doing well in many places, especially those outside protected areas," Sunarto said. "As long as forest conversion continues, tigers will require active protection or they will quickly disappear from our planet."

The study is the first of its kind to systematically investigate the Sumatran tiger’s use of different land cover types for habitat.

The study concludes that in order to protect tigers, it is critical to stop clearing Indonesia's remaining natural forests for plantations. With adjustments in management practices on existing plantations to include more understory and riparian forest corridors, tigers could use a mosaic of forest patches across fragmented landscapes.

"We hope that plantation managers and concession owners can use the recommendations of this report to apply best management practices to further protect Sumatran tigers from extinction," said Anwar Purwoto, director of the Forest, Freshwater, and Species Program at WWF¬Indonesia.

"Ensuring that tigers are able to roam freely in natural forests and restored habitat is crucial to their survival," said co-author Sybille Klenzendorf, head of WWF's species program, who earned her master's and doctorate degrees in wildlife science from Virginia Tech. "This study is a reminder of just how important it is for us to protect the natural forests that tigers and other animals rely on."

The report was published in the Public Library of Science's online journal PLoS ONEon Jan. 23, and was a collaboration between the university and WWF, with support from the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry.

Human activities threaten Sumatran tiger population

Sumatran tigers, found exclusively on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, are on the brink of extinction. By optimistic estimates, perhaps 400 individuals survive. But the exact the number and locations of the island's dwindling tiger population has been up for debate.

Virginia Tech and World Wildlife Fund researchers have found that tigers in central Sumatra live at very low densities, lower than previously believed, according to a study in the April 2013 issue of Oryx -- The International Journal of Conservation.

The findings by Sunarto, who earned his doctorate from Virginia Tech in 2011, and co-researchers Marcella Kelly, an associate professor of wildlife in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, and Erin Poor of East Lansing, Mich., a doctoral student studying wildlife science and geospatial environmental analysis in the college, suggest that high levels of human activity limit the tiger population.

Researchers studied areas and habitat types not previously surveyed, which could inform interventions needed to save the tiger.

"Tigers are not only threatened by habitat loss from deforestation and poaching; they are also very sensitive to human disturbance," said Sunarto, a native of Indonesia, where people typically have one name. "They cannot survive in areas without adequate understory, but they are also threatened in seemingly suitable forests when there is too much human activity."

The smallest surviving tiger subspecies, Sumatran tigers are extremely elusive and may live at densities as low as one cat per 40 square miles. This is the first study to compare the density of Sumatran tigers across various forest types, including the previously unstudied peat land. The research applied spatial estimation techniques to provide better accuracy of tiger density than previous studies.

Sunarto, a tiger and elephant specialist with World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia, collaborated on the paper with Kelly, Professor Emeritus Michael Vaughan, and Sybille Klenzendorf, managing director of WWF's Species Conservation Program, who earned her master's and doctoral degrees in wildlife science from Virginia Tech. The WWF field team collected data in partnership with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry staff.

"Getting evidence of the tigers' presence was difficult," Kelly said. "It took an average of 590 days for camera traps to get an image of each individual tiger recorded."

"We believe the low detection of tigers in the study area of central Sumatra was a result of the high level of human activity -- farming, hunting, trapping, and gathering of forest products," Sunarto said. "We found a low population of tigers in these areas, even when there was an abundance of prey animals."

Legal protection of an area, followed by intensive management, can reduce the level of human disturbance and facilitate the recovery of the habitat and as well as tiger numbers. The researchers documented a potentially stable tiger population in the study region's Tesso Nilo Park, where legal efforts are in place to discourage destructive human activities.

The study -- "Threatened predator on the equator: Multi-point abundance estimates of the tiger Panthera tigris in central Sumatra" -- indicates that more intensive monitoring and proactive management of tiger populations and their habitats are crucial or this tiger subspecies will soon follow the fate of its extinct Javan and Balinese relatives.

TIGER FOUND DEAD

  A tiger was found dead in suspicious circumstance with its limbs missing in the Nllamala Forest in Mabhubhnagar district. Though the big cat reportedly died two days ago, the incident came into light on Thursday when the Shepherds alerted the local officials. It is suspected that the smugglers kills the tiger and cut off its limbs for nails due to the high demands of then\m in the international market. The carcass of the tiger was found at Rushula Cheruvu in the Munnanoor forest range. Rushula Cheruvu is major source of water for the wild animals. That's why the smugglers always keep an eye on this.
              Though the officials also suspected that the tiger was old enough, so it can be possible that the tiger was dead because of its age, and after the death of that big cats, the smugglers came and took away its limbs. The Post-mortem report will ensure the real cause of the death of this tiger.

FIRST NEW RIVER SPECIES SINCE 1918

                      Scientist of Brazil have discovered the first new river dolphin species since the the end of the 1st world war. Named after the Araguaia river where it was found, the species only the fifth known of its in the world. writing on the journal Plos One, the researchers said it separated from the South American river species more than two million years ago. There are believed to be about 1000 of the creature living in the Araguaia river basin.
                       River Dolphins are very rare creatures. According to the IUCN, there are only four known species, and three of them are red listed (Critically Endangered)

FUTURE OF THE SIBERIAN TIGER

INTRODUCTION

          Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altiaca), also known as the Amur tiger is the largest living big cat and also ranked among the biggest felids that ever exists in the world. Amur tiger once found throughout the Russian Far East, north China and the Korean peninsular. By the 1940s, hunting has driven the Amur tiger to the brink of extinction- with no more than 40 individuals remaining in the wild. The subspecies was saved when Russia become the first country to grant the tigers full protection. By 1980s, the population increases around 500. Although poaching increases in these days, the number of the Amur tiger in the wild is now stable (400-500).

THREAT FOR THE SIBERIAN TIGER

         The main threats for these tigers today are the habitat loss, very low density of prey and poaching. 

FUTURE OF SIBERIAN TIGER

         The future of these tiger completely depends on the human. If we do not care, then these tiger will extinct in future. At present these Amur tigers are Endangered species according to IUCN 3.1 Red List. 

WHAT TO DO

       To save these creature the best we can do is to do nothing i.e. leave them in the wild, do not interface their life. But all of us know that is impossible today. So we have to do a lot to save them. 

MY THOUGHT TO SAVE AMUR TIGER

       Here is my thoughts to save them. 

1. We use camera traps to watch whole movement of the Amur tigers.

2. Use radio- collars for their exact locations.

3. Capture some of the pregnant tigress and transfer them to a safe location or area where we can monitor them 24 hours. But those tigress must not feel caged.

4. When the tiger cubs are old enough we transfer them to the wild.

5. To deal with the poachers, the government must enforce new laws and strict punishment for the poachers.

PROBLEMS AND HOPE

       Still there is no solution for the habitat loss and the low prey density though we knew the cats are the best in adaptation and evolution. So we hope the life will find its way and these Amur tiger find there way of life and will not extinct in future.

SELLING WHITE RHINOS TO SAVE THEM- IS THAT A SOLUTION?

                   In effort to curb rhino poaching, the South African Govt. is taking a different approach- selling them. Within the last two years the Kruger National Park (KNP) has sold 170 white rhinos to private ranches. This is necessary to improve the conservation of status of white rhinos in the country by establishing rhino populations on the private ranches.
                   KNP has been a target of rhino poaching because of its long international boundaries. It has lost 381 rhinos, the official statistics reveal. Selling the rhinos also generate the income of the KNP. Though no black rhinos have been sold as reported. black rhinos are critically endangered species, of which fewer than 5000 remains in the wild, worldwide.

                    South Africa is the home of rhinos since the beginning. 70% of the rhino population lives here. But illegal poaching stoked by growing demand for the rhino horns has diminished the rhino population in South Africa.
                    But selling the rhinos is a alternative solution, if KNP can not find a good way to stop this poaching then the day is not far when all the rhinos are either sold or killed by the poachers.