Posted by smartshyam on Oct. 10, 2013, 7:40 p.m.
The tiger is an endangered species.[108] Poaching for fur and body parts and destruction of habitat have simultaneously greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild. At the start of the 20th century, it is estimated there were over 100,000 tigers in the wild but the population has dwindled outside of captivity to between 1,500 and 3,500.[109] Demand for tiger parts for the purposes of Traditional Chinese Medicine has also been cited as a major threat to tiger populations.[110][111] Some estimates suggest that there are less than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, with no subpopulation containing more than 250 mature breeding individuals.[1]
India
India is home to the world's largest population of tigers in the wild.[113] According to the World Wildlife Fund, of the 3,500 tigers around the world, 1,400 are found in India. Only 11% of original Indian tiger habitat remains, and it is becoming significantly fragmented and often degraded.[114][115]
A major concerted conservation effort, known as Project Tiger, has been underway since 1973, initially spearheaded by Indira Gandhi. The fundamental accomplishment has been the establishment of over 25 well-monitored tiger reserves in reclaimed land where human development is categorically forbidden. The program has been credited with tripling the number of wild Bengal tigers from roughly 1,200 in 1973 to over 3,500 in the 1990s. However, a tiger census carried out in 2007, whose report was published on February 12, 2008, stated that the wild tiger population in India declined by 60% to approximately 1,411.[116] It is noted in the report that the decrease of tiger population can be attributed directly to poaching.[117]
Following the release of the report, the Indian government pledged $153 million to further fund the Project Tiger initiative, set up a Tiger Protection Force to combat poachers, and fund the relocation of up to 200,000 villagers to minimise human-tiger interaction.[118] Additionally, eight new tiger reserves in India were set up.[119] Indian officials successfully started a project to reintroduce the tigers into the Sariska Tiger Reserve.[120] The Ranthambore National Park is often cited as a major success by Indian officials against poaching.[121]
Tigers Forever is a collaboration between the Wildlife Conservation Society and Panthera Corporation to serve as both a science-based action plan and a business model to ensure that tigers live in the wild forever. Initial field sites of Tigers Forever include the world's largest tiger reserve, the 21,756 km2 (8,400 sq mi) Hukaung Valley in Myanmar, the Western Ghats in India, Thailand's Huai Khai Khaeng-Thung Yai protected areas, and other sites in Laos PDR, Cambodia, the Russian Far East and China covering approximately 260,000 km2 (100,000 sq mi) of critical tiger habitat.[122]
Russia
The Siberian tiger was on the brink of extinction with only about 40 animals in the wild in the 1940s. Under the Soviet Union, anti-poaching controls were strict and a network of protected zones (zapovedniks) were instituted, leading to a rise in the population to several hundred. Poaching again became a problem in the 1990s, when the economy of Russia collapsed, local hunters had access to a formerly sealed off lucrative Chinese market, and logging in the region increased. While an improvement in the local economy has led to greater resources being invested in conservation efforts, an increase of economic activity has led to an increased rate of development and deforestation. The major obstacle in preserving the species is the enormous territory individual tigers require (up to 450 km2 needed by a single female and more for a single male).[123] Current conservation efforts are led by local governments and NGO's in consort with international organisations, such as the World Wide Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society.[124] The competitive exclusion of wolves by tigers has been used by Russian conservationists to convince hunters in the Far East to tolerate the big cats, as they limit ungulate populations less than wolves, and are effective in controlling the latter's numbers.[125] Currently, there are about 400–550 animals in the wild.
China
During the early 1970s, such as in the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, China rejected the Western-led environmentalist movement as an impeachment on the full use of its own resources. However, this stance softened during the 1980s, as China emerged from diplomatic isolation and desired normal trade relations with Western countries. China became a party to the CITES treaty in 1981, bolstering efforts at tiger conservation by transnational groups like Project Tiger, which were supported by the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank. In 1988, China passed the Law on the Protection of Wildlife, listing the tiger as a Category I protected species. In 1993, China banned the trade on tiger parts, which led to a drop in the number of tiger bones harvested for use in traditional Chinese medicine.[126]
However, as the tiger bone trade was undermined by effective Chinese legislation in the 1990s, the Tibetan people's trade in tiger pelts emerged as a relatively more important threat to tigers. As wealth in the Tibetan areas increased, singers and participants in annual Tibetan horse races began to wear chuba (coats made out of Tiger skins) with longer trims. Tiger pelt clothing became a standard of beauty, and even mandatory at weddings, with Tibetan families competing to buy larger and larger pelts to demonstrate their social status.[126] In 2003, Chinese customs officials in Tibet intercepted 31 tigers, 581 leopards, and 778 otters, which if sold in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa would have netted $10,000, $850, and $250 respectively. By 2004, international conservation organizations such as World Wide Fund for Nature, Fauna and Flora International, and Conservation International were targeting Tibetans in China in successful environmental propaganda campaigns against the tiger skin trade. In the summer of 2005, the Environmental Investigation Agency sent undercover teams to Litang and Nagchu in order to film documentation of Tibetan violations of Chinese environmental law for submission to the Chinese CITES office. In April 2005, Care for the Wild International and Wildlife Trust of India confronted the 14th Dalai Lama about the Tibetan trade, and his response was recorded as "awkward" and "ambushed", with suspicion against the NGOs for trying to "dramatize" the situation as "mak[ing] it seem as if Tibetans were the culprit".[126]
Although popular accounts since the 1980s have portrayed the Tibetans as "having always lived in harmony with the earth", according to the Professor of Geography Emily Yeh, "None of the 14th Dalai Lama's seven books published before 1985, nor interviews that he gave from his arrival in India in 1959 through the mid-1980s, make reference to environmental issues or the relationship between Tibetan Buddhism and ecology". However, the NGO campaign in India threatened the goodwill of the Indian government towards the Dalai Lama's Central Tibetan Administration; the Indian environmentalist Maneka Gandhi even proposed on television to "throw all Tibetans out of India [as] each one of them is a poacher".[126] In May, the Dalai Lama was confronted in the United States by activists from the National Geographic Society with evidence that Tibetans were the primary cause of the illegal tiger trade in China; he reacted as describing himself as "embarrassed". At the 2006 Kalachakra festival in India, he gave a speech to an audience of 10,000, including 8000 Tibetans from China, in which he condemned "following the bad example of the ostentatious garments made of tiger and leopard pelts worn by some protector deities such as Dgra lha" as "shameful". The speech made no reference to ethical or religious issues about killing animals, but instead focused on the reputation of Tibetan exiles and their threatened status as citizens of India.[126] The Dalai Lama later took credit in a press release for incidents of Tibetans burning their chubas, while decrying the arrest of those who complied with environmental regulations as a political statement in support of him.[127]
Population estimate
The global wild tiger population is estimated at anywhere between 3,062 and 3,948 individuals. The World Wide Fund for Nature estimates the tiger population at 3,200.[128] The exact number of wild tigers is unknown, as many estimates are outdated or come from educated guesses. Few estimates are considered reliable, coming from comprehensive scientific censuses. The table shows estimates per country according to IUCN and range country governments.[129]
| Country | Estimate |
|---|---|
 Bangladesh |
440 |
 Bhutan |
75 |
 Cambodia |
20 |
 China |
45 |
 India |
1,706 |
 Indonesia |
325 |
 Laos |
17 |
 Malaysia |
500 |
 Myanmar |
85 |
 Nepal |
155 |
 North Korea |
n/a |
 Russia |
360 |
 Thailand |
200 |
 Vietnam |
20 |
| Total | 3,948 |