Saving the tiger

One year after much-hyped summit, the big cat's fate still hangs by a thread
Nirmal Ghosh Straits Times 10 Dec 11;

BANGKOK: In 1894, when Rudyard Kipling penned The Jungle Book, there were 100,000 tigers in the wild. Today, their numbers have plunged to a fearfully vulnerable 3,000.

To save the majestic big cats, a Tiger Summit was held in November last year, the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese lunar calendar.

Now, just over a year since the much-hyped Tiger Summit in St Petersburg, conservationists see pockets of hope while taking stock. But all agree that much, much more needs to be done on the ground.

The summit itself was supposed to be a 'game changer' in bringing heads of government and top officials to the table, along with conservation organisations and the World Bank. The 13 'tiger range' countries committed to an ambitious goal: doubling the number of tigers in the wild by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.

To meet that target, much has to be done to address two major threats that could drive tigers to extinction - poaching and habitat loss.

Restoration of lost habitat 'corridors', which would enable isolated remnant tiger populations to link up, is critical if the animals are to breed and raise their numbers.

As it is, viable tiger populations - those with sufficient numbers of both sexes to breed - are thought to no longer exist in China, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Elsewhere, Thailand is thought to have between 250 and 300 tigers left in the wild. Malaysia may have up to 500, but they are under severe threat from poachers.

Indonesia, which lost the Balinese tiger in the 1950s and the Javan tiger in the 1970s, has about 400 Sumatran tigers left. India officially has up to 1,700 tigers, but independent conservationists believe the number is closer to 1,200.

Linking up forest 'corridors' is a complex and tedious business. In most cases, human populations need to be moved - a process that is under way in some areas but invariably takes years.

Meanwhile, protection is critical if the tiny pockets of remaining tigers in the wild are not to be wiped out. And this is where the battle becomes truly difficult. 'It's painfully clear that the poachers... are getting more efficient,' Dr William Schaedla, the regional director for Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network, noted four months ago, after a dozen illegal snares were discovered in the jungles of Perak, Malaysia.

'This begs obvious questions about whether the enforcement authorities are managing to keep pace with the criminals. Sadly, it appears they are not,' he said.

The foot soldiers of tiger protection are poorly paid, face formidable odds and work in hazardous conditions.

A case in point: Forest ranger Sommai Chidchai, 29, was patrolling in Thailand's Pang Sida National Park in June when he tripped a wire connected to a loaded rifle hidden in the bushes. The weapon - meant to kill wildlife - went off, sending a bullet through his leg.

Urgent need to save last breeding grounds

He was initially given just US$16 (S$20) in compensation by the Thai government. After non-governmental organisation (NGO) Freeland Foundation gave him US$160, the government raised the compensation to the same amount.

Rangers like Mr Sommai are often raw 20-somethings who have to brave leeches and mosquitoes, driving rain and the scorching sun while on patrol for days on end. When they come across a poacher, he could be a harmless village lad out to get a wild boar or a battle-hardened former soldier armed with an automatic rifle out to shoot a tiger.

Rangers protect hundreds of square kilometres of forest land, but they are paid only US$100 to US$160 a month, with no medical scheme or insurance.

'The importance of wildlife and ecosystem protection is simply not acknowledged in their financial remuneration,' said wildlife conservation veteran Belinda Stewart-Cox, in Thailand. 'The message this conveys is that these guys are right at the bottom of the pile.'

NGOs like the Freeland Foundation sometimes step in to help, offering training and funding for equipment.

Mr Tim Redmond, a member of Freeland, believes more could be done officially: 'Some of the (forest protection staff) we work with are earning the same amount they did 20 years ago. There are no allowances to buy food or petrol unless an NGO supports them. They have GPS (Global Positioning System) sets and no money to buy batteries.

'Having said that, they are often good guys, and proud of what they do.'

With all its problems, Thailand is still ahead of its neighbours Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar in tiger conservation. In these three countries, the pay is even lower and resources even harder to come by.

There is also added pressure from land-clearing and development, which has accelerated at a rapid pace in the past five years in Cambodia, said Phnom Penh-based Matthew Maltby, a projects officer for the NGO, Fauna & Flora International.

A paper in the journal PLoS Biology in September last year noted: 'Strategies to save the tiger must focus first and foremost on protecting... remaining concentrations of tigers.'

The paper identified 42 'sources sites' with viable breeding populations.

'The immediate priority must be to ensure that the last breeding populations are protected and continuously monitored,' said the authors - wildlife biologists and conservationists from several countries, including Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Thailand. 'Without such protection, all other efforts are bound to fail.'

But protection - with its neverending vigilance against poachers - is an exercise marked by difficulties and setbacks.

India has dozens of tiger reserves, but in recent years, two - Sariska in Rajasthan state and Panna in Madhya Pradesh state - had all their tigers wiped out by poaching gangs.

The reason: Protection is often patchy. Mr Ravindra Juyal, who is in charge of Ramnagar forest division on the fringes of Corbett Tiger Reserve, said his staff sometimes do not have the money to buy diesel for their jeeps to mount patrols on his patch.

Clearly, funding is a problem. According to one estimate, at least US$5 million to US$6 million is spent every year on tigers by conservation organisations.

But often, the money is spread thinly over too many areas. Governments spend more but bureaucracies are often inefficient and corrupt, and the money that reaches the field, where it truly matters, is sometimes barely enough.

Ms Debbie Banks, a tiger campaigner with London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, pointed out that 'a wildlife department needs to be made up of committed, trained and well-resourced officers who see protection as a priority and have the skills to fight crime'.

'I'd question whether the forest service of many tiger range countries is set up to do that,' she said.

As for punishment, the problem has long been in ensuring successful prosecution, even if efforts are being made to stiffen the penalties. In India, the punishment is five to seven years in prison, but fewer than 20 people have been convicted of killing a tiger.

On a brighter note, determined protection efforts do work. In north-east India, Kaziranga National Park has a high density of tigers because its wildlife department protects the reserve with fierce dedication. Kaziranga has an area of 430 sq km with 65 to 70 tigers. Another tiger reserve, Buxa, also in India's north-east, is almost twice as large but has half the number of tigers. In Buxa, protection is weak and poaching for wildlife as well as forest produce is rampant.

The big cat is resilient and breeds well with enough pristine habitat and prey. In Thailand, the existence of tigers was recently confirmed in Thap Lan National Park, where there was previously thought to be virtually none.

But with tiger numbers so low and many small populations isolated from one another, it is possible that if they do not recover, and if remnant populations are killed off by poachers, the big cat may be extinct in the wild in a decade or two.

Activists worry that while the Tiger Summit may have raised global awareness of the problem, the pledges made by the parties involved are not binding.

Official resources are inadequate to the task, and things have not gone further downhill only because of the efforts of various NGOs.

So, a year on, the tiger's future still hangs by a thread.

Freeland's Mr Redmond observed recently that 'tigers in South-east Asia have survived this long because they fear everything. They sneak around'.

A sad state of affairs for one of nature's most fearsome predators.

Rise of 'tiger farms' amid roaring trade
Farms in China pose new threat with push to get tiger trade ban lifted
Grace Ng, China Correspondent Straits Times 10 Dec 11;

BEIJING: The recent spotting of a wild Siberian tiger near a remote reservoir in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang sparked great excitement in China.

News of the sighting of the two- year-old male in October grabbed headlines nationwide and even made it to state TV. But just five days later, the carcass of a tiger - probably the same one - was found, a rusty hunter's snare around its neck.

It was a blow to those fighting to save China's endangered tigers. The Siberian is one of the world's rarest tigers, and China has only about 20 left in the wild.

Pitted against the conservationists are an army of poachers and growing numbers of affluent Chinese willing to pay handsomely to consume tiger parts.

Roaring sales of tiger meat and 'tiger bone wine' - which can cost as much as 1,000 yuan (S$200) for a small flask - have turned China into the world's largest market for such products, despite a ban imposed on the trade since 1993.

The bones are touted to guarantee long life and as treatment for rheumatism and arthritis. Tiger eyeballs are said to cure epilepsy, their whiskers to stop toothache and their penises to aid sexual potency.

While there are no official estimates of the value of this underground trade, some non-profit conservation agencies put it in the region of millions of US dollars a year. The going rate for a pelt is reportedly more than 200,000 yuan and a paw, 8,000 yuan.

With prices of tiger parts continuing to climb, it is no wonder poachers are drawn to the trade. Although poachers who kill tigers face the maximum death sentence, there has been no recent record of anyone being executed for the crime.

In 2009, a man in Hubei province was reportedly sentenced to 18 years' jail for killing a tiger to sell its parts. In another case in the same year, the ringleader of a group of poachers was given 12 years' jail and fined 480,000 yuan.

Another man in Jilin city who trafficked tiger parts was sentenced to five years' jail and fined 100,000 yuan in 2005, according to chinacourt.org. The penalties for trafficking of tiger parts vary according to the value of the trade.

Meanwhile, activists worry about a new threat: the rise of 'tiger farms'.

Close to two dozen were in existence last year, and altogether they have bred some 6,000 tigers in captivity - more than the number existing in the wild.

Some are run like zoos or wildlife theme parks, complete with gift shops and animal feeding shows.

Many of them aim to convince the Chinese government to lift its ban on trade in tiger parts, say conservationists.

Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village in Guilin, which opened in 1993, is one of the largest of tiger-breeding operations. Some of its 1,500 animals roam in fenced-in areas, while many more are kept crammed in iron pens.

An American diplomat who visited Xiongsen undercover described a 'circus-like environment' where 'several tigers were being struck with a metal pole, while others were whipped'.

Other tiger protection activists who visited such farms spoke of sick and malnourished animals and dubious practices.

'These are speed-breeding factory farms,' Ms Judy Mills of Conservation International told the BBC. According to her research, farm tigresses produce cubs at about three times their natural rate, bearing up to three litters a year. The cubs are often taken away from their mothers before they are properly weaned.

According to local media, at least 11 Siberian tigers starved to death last year in one farm in Shenyang.

Critics such as the Environmental Investigation Agency, a London-based organisation, have warned that the farms' push to sell tiger parts legally would make it 'easier for black marketers to 'launder' their wild-killed animals by selling them as farm-raised'.

As Professor Mang Ping, a leading Chinese animal rights activist, told the China Daily this week: 'It is difficult to judge whether tiger parts products come from wild tigers or not. Therefore, wild tigers will be in danger.'

The World Bank, which is party to a tiger conservation programme, has called for these farms to be shut down, citing similar concerns.

But some people, like Mr Zhang Chengzong, a manager of the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin, see things differently.

He and other breeders argue that it is very expensive to maintain the tigers, and a lifting of the ban will help in the funding of raising tigers.

China, with the support of the World Wildlife Fund, is aiming to double its tiger population to 40 by 2022. It has joined a programme to breed tigers in the wild. And about 90 Chinese volunteers will embark on a mission next month to clear Heilongjiang of all tiger traps.

Professor Jiang Guangshun of the Northeast Forestry University warned it would not be easy. 'Some of these traps could have been set as long as 10 years ago. Because they are well-hidden, it is difficult to thoroughly clear them all.'

Such efforts notwithstanding, some wildlife activists want a greater show of commitment from Beijing. They point to the ambiguities in the official position.

While killing a wild tiger for trade attracts the death penalty, the sale of tiger parts from animals which die of natural causes is technically allowed. This enables Xiongsen and other farms to operate in a grey area of the law, using the bones of animals that have died naturally in captivity to produce 'medicinal' wine. Meanwhile, other parts of their carcasses are reportedly kept in freezers, awaiting the day the ban on their sale is lifted.

'One of the biggest contributions China could make to reducing illegal trade of tiger parts is to devalue wildlife parts and products, by destroying its stockpile of tiger parts,' said Ms Grace Gabriel, Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Only by doing so, she said, will it send a strong and unequivocal message to the world that tiger poaching, trade and consumption is not tolerated.

Background story

ENDANGERED

Tigers are the largest of all the Asian big cats, but their number in the wild is at an all-time low, just over 3,000.

Tigers face unrelenting pressure from poaching, retaliatory killings and habitat loss.

The illegal trade in tiger parts has led to more than 1,000 wild tigers being killed over the past decade, according to Traffic International, a wildlife trade monitoring network.

Tigers are extinct in 11 countries they once roamed, and are in a precarious state in many of the current 13 - Russia, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and China.

Three tiger sub-species - the Bali, Javan, and Caspian - have become extinct in the past 70 years.

The six remaining sub-species - Siberian, Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan, South China and Sumatran - are all threatened. The South China tiger may have disappeared from the wild, with no sightings for nearly 40 years.

Since October 1987, tigers have been listed as an Appendix I species (threatened with extinction) under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. This means all commercial trade in the animals or their parts is banned.

SOURCE: WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, BBC

Living with tigers: An uneasy co-existence
Nirmal Ghosh Straits Times 10 Dec 11;

DHIKULI (India): It was late afternoon in northern India. Soon it would be twilight. As we moved through the teak plantation with its tangled undergrowth, leaves crunched under our boots in the silence of the gloomy forest.

We were following the trail of a tiger that had killed and dragged away a bullock.

When we finally found the dead animal, it was lying in heavy foliage, its neck broken and parts of its rump chewed away. Tigers habitually rip open their kill from the rump and pull out the entrails, leaving them aside before starting to eat the rest of the carcass.

The big cat was probably nearby. Close to the kill, we found saucer-sized pug marks in soft sand.

The bullock belonged to Ms Madhvi Devi, a woman in her 30s who lives in a village in the forest. Ms Devi, who was among our search party of four, stood next to the dead animal as a photograph was taken of her holding a small blackboard with details of the kill marked down in chalk.

A few minutes later, she was given 1,500 rupees (S$37) in compensation.

The picture was for the records of the interim relief scheme of The Corbett Foundation (TCF) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The scheme pays villagers when their livestock is killed by tigers and leopards outside the legal boundaries of Corbett National Park, north India's most significant tiger habitat.

The park and surrounding forest are classified as a tiger reserve. There are an estimated 200 tigers within the sprawling 822 sq km reserve.

The relief scheme was started by TCF in 1995. The aim is to soften the blow of losing a milk-producing or draught animal and make it less likely that villagers will kill the predator in revenge or at the bidding of a poacher. In 1998, the WWF began funding it.

The amount given varies according to the animal. The market price of the livestock is usually higher, but this cash is paid out immediately.

Ms Devi should get money from the state government as well, but the system is slow. The divisional forest officer of the area, Mr Ravindra Juyal, says the bureaucracy is still processing compensation claims dating back to 2009.

On-the-spot payment under the scheme makes up somewhat for the inadequacies of the official system. As Ms Devi said to me: 'I am uneducated, I don't know how to fill out forms, and anyway, I won't get the money for years, so why bother? You are the only people who compensate us.'

TCF was founded in 1994 by Mr Dilip Khatau, a former textile and shipping tycoon who is now a Singapore resident. He grew up in Africa and returned to his native India to give something back to the jungles he used to roam as a young man during his holidays.

The foundation works among forest communities living on the edges of Corbett National Park, providing health care for locals, wildlife conservation awareness programmes for local schoolchildren, as well as running the interim relief scheme.

Money is paid only if it can be confirmed that the livestock has been killed by a tiger or a leopard, hence the importance of investigating each death.

The scheme covers a vast area in which there are 334 villages. The number of kills per year has been edging up.

Compensation paid under the interim relief scheme in 2009 totalled a relatively paltry $45,327. The number of kills that year was 1,124 - up from 972 in 2008, and 737 in 2007.

The scheme may be keeping the tigers in these forests alive. Dr A.J.T. Johnsingh, one of India's foremost wildlife field biologists, has likened the tigers in these peripheral forests to 'patients in intensive care'.

'The interim relief scheme is the oxygen that in this case indirectly helps keep them alive,' he said.

Tigers do not know legal boundaries as they roam the national park. Outside the park, there are reserve forests, but these are mixed-use forests also inhabited by people: tribal cattle herders as well as farmers with livestock and crop fields.

Over the years, tiny hamlets strung around the edge of the forest have grown into towns. Roads have been widened and traffic has multiplied. Tourist resorts eat into the edges of the jungle. It all adds up to a steady erosion of tiger habitat.

As a result, cattle have become targets for hungry tigers. Occasionally, tigers have turned into man-eaters, or in accidental encounters, mauled local people in the forest cutting wood.

There is no question that the tiger is on the losing end in such conflicts.

'Problem' tigers are shot or trapped and removed - if they are lucky, to deep inside the national park, and if unlucky, to a zoo.

'Conflict between humans and wildlife has become increasingly frequent and hostile in recent years,' noted a WWF report on the interim relief scheme, released in September.

'Human-tiger conflict poses a significant threat to tiger conservation.'

These forests are the trenches of tiger conservation, where the giant cat is vulnerable to poachers who can kill it for next to nothing, with a wire snare, for the Chinese market.

They are also vulnerable to revenge killing. In September, in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh, a tiger which was killing livestock was trapped and beaten to death by angry locals.

This is where the WWF/TCF scheme comes in. There is a simple index of the success of paying local communities compensation. The WWF report notes that there have been no cases of tiger poisoning in the area since the mid-1990s.

The support of local communities is critical if tiger conservation is to have any chance of success. The money may be small in dollar terms, but it means a lot to locals living hardscrabble lives in a tiger habitat.

Nirmal Ghosh has written three books on Indian wildlife and natural history, and has been involved in tiger and Asian elephant conservation for over 20 years. He is a TCF trustee.