A Vision of Tiger Landscapes
Our vision of tiger landscapes builds on the concept of the tiger conservation unit, developed by WWF and Wildlife Conservation Society with support from the Save the Tiger Fund. Rather than keeping islands of tiger populations intact amid some of the densest human populations on Earth, the goal of tiger conservation units is to focus our limited resources on blocks of existing habitats that contain or have the potential to contain interacting populations of tigers. This approach recognizes that long-term viability of tiger populations is dependent not just on population size and reproductive success, but also on trends in habitat fragmentation, levels of disturbance, size of prey base and human impacts.
Through our tiger landscape strategy, WWF is taking the tiger conservation unit model a step further. We define a tiger conservation landscape as an area of land, regional in scale, that can support and maintain a viable metapopulation of tigers, linked by safe and suitable habitat corridors, together with an adequate natural prey base. On the ground, this will often mean a series of well-managed core protected areas (national parks or wildlife sanctuaries), together with any buffer zones, linked together by dedicated corridors of suitable habitat or by land-use that is tiger friendly.
With a landscape approach, we will:
- create incentives to encourage local communities to support conservation,
- reduce poaching of tigers and their prey,
- improve transboundary and international cooperation, and
- reconcile the needs of tigers and people in a mutually beneficial manner.
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