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The Tiger Study
Highlights from 'Setting Priorities for the Conservation and Recovery of the World's Tigers: 2005-2015'
Recently, WWF, Save the Tiger Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society and the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park collaborated on the most comprehensive scientific study of tiger habitats to date. We found that tigers reside in 40 percent less habitat than they were thought to a decade ago and now occupy only seven percent of their historic range.
The study also finds that conservation efforts have resulted in some populations remaining stable and even increasing, but concludes that long-term success is only achieved where there is broad landscape-level conservation and buy-in from stakeholders.
About the study
- This is the most comprehensive report on the state of wild tigers ever produced and serves as a roadmap to guide conservation investors, practitioners, development agencies and governments as to actions needed to save wild tigers.
- Tiger conservation landscapes (TCLs) - an area with sufficient habitat for at least five tigers and where tigers have been confirmed to occur in the last 10 years - were assessed and 76 identified across Asia.
- TCL's were then prioritized by analyzing three data sets:
- land cover derived from satellite images;
- human interference data based on a previous global human footprint analysis; and
- tiger distribution records from on-the-ground tiger sightings and signs, gathered from more than 3,000 tiger location points and input from 160 of the world's leading tiger conservation experts.
Important findings
- Tigers occupy just seven percent of their historic range.
- Tigers use 40 percent less area than was estimated in the first habitat assessment, completed in 1995 and published in 1997.
- A large area of habitat remains (>1.1 million km2).
- Four strongholds were found that can support more than 500 tigers:
- Russian Far East-Northeast China,
- Terai Arc Landscape of India and Nepal,
- Northern Forest Complex-Namdapha-Royal Manas (Bhutan/Myanmar/India) and
- Tenasserims of Thailand and Myanmar.
- Just 23 percent of tiger conservation landscapes are protected.
Recommendations to ensure a future for tigers
- Create human-tiger friendly landscapes that offer both core protected areas, surrounded by buffer zones where tigers can raise their young and allow humans and tigers to co-exist, and provide corridors that will connect tigers to other core protected areas.
- Increase conservation investment. Between 1998 and 2003, US$23.3 million was invested in all tiger conservation landscapes, with the two most significant donors being WWF and Save the Tiger Fund.
- Improve conservation across international borders - 18 of the tiger conservation landscapes are transboundary.
- Essential goals for the next 10 years:
- Secure tiger populations in all global-priority tiger landscapes;
- Obtain reserve status for 10 places with unprotected breeding tiger populations;
- Establish at least five tiger habitat "corridors" between fragmented tiger conservation landscapes.
- Expand the range of breeding tigers in at least five priority tiger conservation landscapes.
- Implement a holistic conservation strategy. This should engage regional development organizations, government officials, NGO's and businesses to consider tiger conservation needs in national and regional development plans.
Learn more at tigermaps.org
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Tiger population has decreased by about 95 percent since 1900 and its range has decreased by 93 percent.
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