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Tigers and Conservationists Need Help

© Kenneth Friedman

If you visit subtropical Royal Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal, you can ride elephants and see grazing rhinos, but don't expect to see a tiger. They're elusive--and endangered. You stand a better chance of seeing them in a zoo or at a magic show.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Washington, D.C., recent field studies and computer mapping by its scientists and representatives of the Wildlife Conservation Society identified 159 tiger areas in five bioregions: the Indian subcontinent, Indochina, Southeast Asia, central and southern China, and the Russian Far East. On the Indian subcontinent, 59 areas can be found in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

Of the total 159 areas, says WWF, 24 are high priority and in need of a conservation strategy to overcome the primary threats to tiger survival: logging and poaching. Logging for commercial lumber, domestic fuelwood and cleared land destroys habitat not only of tigers but of their prey. Poaching supplies the illegal trade in animal parts used for medicinal purposes. Poaching also kills the tigers' prey.

Where conservationists have taught people to protect tigers and their habitat, which can be as much as 100 square miles for a male in some places, populations have increased. The Siberian tiger is an example of such a recovery, according to WWF's chief scientist Eric Dinnerstein in an article in WWF's FOCUS newsletter. Understanding the behavioral characteristics of each tiger population is important because behaviors differ from area (ecosystem) to area. The behavior of tigers in an inland habitat, for example, differs from the behavior of tigers in a coastal mangrove forest.

Just as important as understanding behavior is coping with habitats that span more than one country. According to WWF, a "large majority of top priority tiger conservation areas straddle or lie near international boundaries," like Chitwan on the Nepal-India border. This means it isn't enough to establish conservation programs in one country, but rather trans-boundary programs must be developed.

One such trans-boundary program is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) [often pronounced "sight-eez"], which helps reduce the illegal trade in animal parts. Also, consumer countries must be helped to find alternative products to tiger-based medicines popular in east Asian countries, according to WWF. At the same time, researchers must learn about the differences in tigers' environmental preferences and needs in regional habitats.

As always, one of the most important human activities is education. To help, WWF has given 1996 grants to eight Asian conservation officers, rangers and educators to pursue advanced education in various aspects of wildlife and habitat management. If you want to help, consider putting WWF on your Christmas list for an end-of-year tax-free gift--to help the highly effective WWF help the tigers. [More information]