ENVIRONMENT-ASIA: Keeping Tiger Habitats Will Help Save Big Cats

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gina Wilkinson

KHAO YAI NATIONAL PARK, Thailand, Feb 14 1999 (IPS) - For several months now, machete-wielding conservationists have been carving a trail deep into this national park and setting a series of traps — of cameras, that is.

Whenever they find a path that is likely to be frequented by tigers, they lash a waterproof camera box onto a nearby tree. The camera is connected to an infra-red device. Every time something passes through the infra-red beam, the camera takes a picture.

The conservationists say while tigers on the prowl are among the images captured on film, the cameras have also yielded shots of various animals like wild boar and porcupines, as well as poachers carrying guns and sacks full of their catch.

Zoologist Tony Lynam, however, says the Thai poachers caught by the cameras were probably hunting small game and not tigers, unlike their counterparts in Burma and Cambodia. But they still pose a threat to the dwindling tiger population here because the big cats are being left with less to eat when the poachers kill the smaller animals.

“Tigers are suffering most from the loss of their food source in competition with humans — the hunting of wild boar, barking deer, sambar and other smaller animals, which make up the tiger’s prey,” says Lynam of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Lynam’s organisation has teamed up with the Thai Forestry Department to discover just how many tigers are left in Thailand and to assess the major threats to their survival.

A century ago, there were some 100,000 tigers spread across Asia, with Thailand lying at the centre of the habitat of the Indochinese tiger. The Thai Forestry Department estimates only 400 of the big cats remain in the wild now, but conservationists say the real number is just 200.

“Tigers are a lot less common than we thought,” says Lynam. “The best areas for tigers in Thailand are only half the density of those in India. So the sense of urgency is greatest in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand.”

Indeed, what they have found out so far has indicated that they may have underestimated the decimation of the tiger population. “There are far fewer tigers than we expected to find,” Lynam reports. “The warning bells are ringing. We must quickly address the threats to the tiger if we are going to save these animals.”

Of these threats, the most serious at least in Thailand is the encroachment of tiger habitats by local farmers, says Tim Redford of the Thai Society for the Conservation of Animals. He notes that neither the logging ban nor the system of protected parks has deterred villagers from invading tiger territory.

Says Redford: “They are cutting down the forest not only to plant crops, but they are burning the forest, year in year out, until it is completely denuded in the hope that they will get land papers and be able to own that land.”

Others say commercial tiger farms also do much damage to the big cat. Thai law demands that the holders of live tigers acquire a special licence, but conservationists point out that not enough is known about the operations of even the legal farms.

Lynam also suspects that many of these facilities are conveniently located in all of the tiger range states.

“The demand for tiger parts is so huge that you can never meet it. People will inevitably catch tigers in the wild and bring them into these farms for breeding, to boost tiger numbers. This puts even more pressure on the wild tiger,” he said.

The farms breed tigers to supply products for use in traditional Chinese medicine, which prescribes tiger bone, blood, eyes and penis as cures for everything from arthritis to a flagging libido.

Other parts of the big cat are no less in demand. A pelt that delivers about 500 dollars to a poacher in Burma, more than the average wage in most developing Asian nations, may move through Bangkok and into Japan, where it can fetch up to 30,000 dollars.

Thailand itself used to be known as the “world’s largest supermarket for the trade in endangered animals” but the government launched a crackdown against such activity.

Redford says though that the trade has simply gone underground or across the border. While there are no more tiger skins and other tiger products being hawked openly in the streets of Bangkok, he says, “if you go behind the scenes, the circumstances have actually gotten worse”.

He adds, “If you cross the border with (Burma )and Cambodia, wildlife products are openly on sale. I’ve been surveying these border towns and over the past five years this has increased dramatically. In one border town, the number of shops dealing in wildlife products has gone from five in 1994 to 35 shops four months ago.”

Redford is also more sceptical than Lynam about the commitment of the Thai government and others in the region to save the tiger. According to Redford, although the governments of the tiger range states gather each year to discuss the plight of the big cat, they merely repeat what has been said before.

He says, “It’s time they got serious and started enforcing their laws, or if they haven’t got the laws writing new laws and ratifying them.”

Lynam, for his part, says Thailand should be given credit for having the largest tiger habitats in South-east Asia today. That may not be saying much, considering the numbers, but it is still an achievement given the odds against the animal.

Lynam agrees with Redford, though, that if no concrete action is done soon, the big cat may become an even scarcer sight in Thailand and other countries in just ten years.

“It’s only going to take so much human interference to push tigers beyond the brink,” says Lynam. “And if we push them beyond that point, tigers will wink out of existence.”

Saving the big cat is only logical, he argues. “If tigers exist, that’s evidence of intact food chains, you have enough prey, you must have water, you must have sufficient habitat,” says Lynam.

“The presence of tigers is an indicator of the health of the whole forest ecosystem. So preserving tigers acts to preserve the forests as well.”