Asia's tigers could get big boost from small changes

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Asia's tigers could get big boost from small changes
mongabay.com
November 5, 2007

Small changes to the management of wildlife reservers in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal could dramatically boost endangered tiger populations, reports a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation.

Examining 157 reservers throughout the Indian subcontinent, the study found that 21 protected areas meet the criteria needed to support large healthy tiger populations. The research suggests that these protected areas could potentially support 3,500 to 6,500 tigers, up from the current estimate of 1,500 to 4,000 cats.

"We were happy to find that the most important reserves identified in the study already have made tiger conservation a priority," said the lead author Dr. Jai Ranganathan of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Bengal tiger. Photo by Betty Groskin of the Wildlife Conservation Society, a group that helped fund the research.

The study recommends increased funding and staff support, restoring tiger habitat, and cracking down on poaching of tigers and their prey. It notes that conservation efforts within the 21 most suitable reserves "should focus primarily on the reserves themselves" while "tiger conservation in the remaining reserves can succeed only with additional management of the unprotected landscapes that surround them."

Conservationists estimate that around 5,000 tigers exist in the wild today--down from 100,000 a century ago.

CITATION: Jai Ranganathan, Kai M.A. Chanb, K. Ullas Karanth, James L. David Smith (2007). Where can tigers persist in the future? A landscape-scale, density-based population model for the Indian subcontinent. Biological Conservation, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2007.09.003

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