Putin, Wen, other leaders in bid to save the tiger

* Russia to host high-level tiger forum
* Just 3,200 tigers left in the wild - WWF
* Russian PM Putin to meet Chinese counterpart
Alissa de Carbonnel Reuters AlertNet 19 Nov 10;

MOSCOW, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, China's premier Wen Jiabao and other world leaders will hold an unprecedented summit next week in a last ditch effort to save the tiger from extinction.

Just 3,200 tigers now roam free, down from 100,000 a century ago, and those that remain face a losing battle with poachers who supply traders in India and China with tiger parts for traditional medicines and purported aphrodisiacs.

The leaders are expected to endorse an initiative by the World Bank and wildlife charity WWF aimed at doubling the tiger population by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger under the Chinese calendar.

"For the first time we have world leaders coming together focused on saving a single species," Jim Leap, international director general of the WWF told reporters on Thursday.

Putin, who is hosting the "tiger summit" with officials from 13 tiger range nations, will try to thrash out a deal aimed at turning the tables on poachers. China's Wen and the prime ministers of Bangladesh and Laos are among those expected.

"The summit may be the last chance for the tiger. Tigers are vanishing," World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters on a conference call ahead of the gathering, which he will attend in Russia's former imperial capital of St Petersburg.

"We need to see poachers behind bars, not tigers," he said. "If we can't save the tiger, which almost every human being knows from an early age, than what is the likelihood we are going to be able to save any other species?"

The bid to halt poaching, loss of habitat and tiger-parts trafficking will cost about $350 million over five years. Securing funding for the 12-year cross border plan will be one of the main aims of the conference, according to the WWF.

On the eve of the forum, a rare Siberian Amur Tiger was found dead from poachers' bullets in Russia's Far Eastern region of Primorsky, highlighting the greatest threat to the tigers.

Only 300 to 400 wild Amur Tigers remain, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

"This crime is a wake up call," IFAW's Russia director Masha Vorontsova said in a statement. "We can't save the tigers unless we combat rampant poaching, which is the single greatest threat to the survival of this species.

Putin, Russia's most powerful man, was feted by Russian media in 2008 for saving a television crew from a Siberian tiger by sedating the beast with a tranquilliser gun.

A study by the WWF and wildlife trade watchdog Traffic this month said more than 1,000 tigers have been killed over the last decade for illegal trade, an average of 104 to 119 tigers a year. The groups said this was probably a fraction of the total.

India, home to half the world's wild tiger population, is the centre of the trade with the most seizures of tiger parts, followed by China, where demand is rampant for tiger parts used in traditional medicines and as aphrodisiacs.

Tiger skins can fetch thousands of dollars on the Chinese black market, though just 1,000 breeding females remain in the wild, surviving on barely 7 percent of their historic range.

Yet Leap of the WWF said it was not too late to save them.

"The good news about tigers is that they are cats and that means that if you protect them, if you provide them space and food, meaning prey, they will come back: They are prolific breeders." (Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Peter Graff)

India under spotlight at tiger conservation conference
Rupam Jain Nair Yahoo News 19 Nov 10;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Efforts to save the tiger, set to be addressed at a conference in Russia next week, will depend in large part on the effectiveness of the shield India has tried to throw over the animal.

The country is home to more than half of the world's rapidly dwindling wild tigers, but even its conservation programme, said by the government to be the world's most comprehensive, has failed to halt the creature's decline.

In the land that inspired Rudyard Kipling's legendary Jungle Book stories -- featuring the cunning tiger protagonist Shere Khan -- authorities are in danger of losing their battle against poachers and other man-made problems.

The picture is similar across the Asian region where one of nature's most revered hunters teeters on the brink of extinction.

"Despite all the efforts, we are still facing challenges at various levels to end the poaching problem," said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in New Delhi last week.

The tiger population in India has fallen to 1,411, from about 3,700 estimated to be alive in 2002 and the 40,000 estimated to be roaming across India at the time of independence from Britain in 1947.

"Besides poaching, the tiger in India faces new threats -- the destruction of its habitat due to industrial expansion, mining projects and construction of dams near protected reserves," Ramesh added.

The federal government in 2007 swung into action by setting up a new tiger protection force, chalked out some bold and urgent steps to end the poaching menace, and pledged to pump millions of dollars into the programme.

Authorities are also moving villages out of reserve areas to secure natural habitat for the tigers and are transferring animals from one reserve to another in a bid to boost populations.

A recent report by wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC said parts from 1,000 tigers slain by poachers across Asia have been seized over the past decade.

"Tiger skins fetch anywhere around 11,000-21,000 US dollars and bones are sold for about 1,000 US dollars in China," said Rajesh Gopal, chairman of National Tiger Conservation Authority in New Delhi

"There is a huge demand for these items in China and poachers take all the risk to make high profits."

Across Asia, the tiger figures are alarming.

According to 2009 International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List, there are 70 tigers in Bhutan, 10-50 in Cambodia, about 40 in China, 300 in Malaysia, 100 in Myanmar, 350 in Russia, more than 250 in Thailand and fewer than 100 in Vietnam.

"There are just 3,200 tigers left across the world. This is a scary figure," Ramesh said last week ahead of the Global Tiger Summit in St Petersburg, which starts on Sunday.

Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection of India, is sceptical about the agenda of the summit, which will seek to double the number of tigers by 2020.

"It sounds very ambitious and positive that we will have 6,000 tigers in two decades, but tell me how will they do it without being able to save the existing ones?" Wright told AFP.

"Patchy intelligence gathering techniques across Asia and lack of cross-border commitment to end the sale of tiger parts has led to a collective failure," she said.

A major trafficking route begins in India and ends in China where tiger parts are highly prized as purported cures for a range of ailments and as aphrodisiacs.

India's porous border with neighbouring Nepal, home to 121 Royal Bengal tigers, acts as a smuggling corridor for poachers, who bribe poor forest dwellers to guide them through the dense jungles.

Earlier this year the Nepalese government pledged to double the number of tigers, but campaigners say the deeply impoverished country lacks the funding to carry through on the promise.

In Bangladesh, another of India's neighbours, chief wildlife conservator Tapan Kumar Dey says tiger numbers have risen since 2004, when a United Nations-funded census found 440, but this is disputed by some observers.

Dey said doubling the tiger population was impossible for Bangladesh.

"The unique mangrove eco-system, a tiger habitat, cannot be expanded to encourage more tigers, plus there is not enough food -- largely spotted deer -- to sustain an increased tiger population," he said.

Russia introduces ban on Korean Pine logging
WWF 19 Nov 10;

The Russian government has taken a huge step to save key Amur tiger habitats by banning Korean Pine logging, WWF says.

Just before the International Tiger Conservation Forum, which will take place Nov. 21-24 in St. Petersburg, the Russian government has adopted a new version of the list of tree and shrub species prohibited for timber logging, and included Korean Pine in the list.

“A ban on Korean Pine logging is the best gift for the Amur tiger in the Year of the Tiger”, says Igor Chestin, CEO of WWF-Russia. “Korean Pine has a crucial importance for tiger conservation: its cones are fodder for wild boars, and wild boars are tiger’s prey”.

Korean Pine is important for tiger conservation

WWF-Russia included this ban in the list of top eight measures that must be taken in Russia for tiger conservation, which were presented to the Ministry of natural resources and environment of Russia in summer 2010.

The new version of the “List of species of trees and shrubs prohibited for timber logging”, which includes the Korean Pine, was approved on Aug. 2, 2010. However, it came into force only on Nov. 12 2010, when the Government cancelled the previous list, adopted on March 15, 2007.

Korean Pine harvest is important for at least 50 species, including the wild boar, one of the main prey species of the Amur tiger. Korean Pine forests played a key role in Amur tiger conservation during the drastic decline in its population (down to just 30 animals) on the Sihote-Alin in the first half of the 20th century.

In 2007, Korean Pine forests received an almost mortal blow – the new Forest Code of Russia cancelled the ban on industrial Korean Pine logging. Taking into account that commercially valuable timber stocks are depleting, forest companies rushed to use the remaining available forests – the protection forests.

As a result, the largest amount of Korean Pine timber in history was exported from the Russian Far East in 2009, and according to WWF estimates, its harvesting exceeded the allowable limits by 2.5-3.7 times.

“Today, Korean Pine forests are in the worst condition in the recent history”, says Denis Smirnov, head of the Forest Program of WWF-Russia Amur branch.

“And half-measures could not save them from complete degradation. Widely announced plans of the regional forest departments and forestries to voluntarily reduce pine logging turned out to be empty promises made to divert the public and government attention from the problem. In this situation, the only adequate decision was to introduce a full ban on Korean Pine logging, and we have been insisting on it for three and a half years”.

The endangered Amur tiger, numbering fewer than 500 in the wild, is found primarily in southeastern Russia and northern China.