Protecting Tigers

Calculating the true number and range of wild tigers has always been a challenge. Free ranging and reclusive, tiger territories stray beyond the boundaries of the national parks dedicated to protect them. Our work to protect these precious populations does the same. As well as working to protect the tigers of Kaziranga we work across the Indian sub-continent helping to mitigate human-animal conflict ensuring that communities live in harmony with wild tigers. In Thailand and Russia we do the same, combining park protection and anti-poaching with education and community outreach to provide an holistic approach to saving these magnificent big cats and their precious forest habitats.

But tigers need more than physical protection, they need the political will to save them along with a huge change in attitudes to the use of and trade in tigers, their parts and derivatives. China and Laos, among others, pose a huge threat to the survival of the tiger in the wild as they continue to flout international laws and stockpile captive bred animals and their body parts and, in some cases, openly sell tigers alive and dead perpetuating the trade in tigers, wild and captive.

In 2016 there are two important international meetings of CITES - the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora an international agreement between governments that aims is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. Since 2015 the chair of the working group governing Asian Big Cats, which includes tigers, has been held by China and a man known for his pro-trade tendancies. As part of an international coalition of NGOs determined to fight the relaxation of the laws governing the trade we will be working hard to ensure that tigers remain protected and that those countries with captive breeding facilities have laws in place that prohibit domestic trade. You can read more on our TigerTime campaign site here

Saving tigers is not simple - it demands co-operation at a grass roots level to protect tigers and their habitats and on the world stage it means protecting tigers and their intrinsic wildness by not allowing them to be farmed like pigs and sheep.

While the 150 tigers in Kaziranga represent a small percentage of the 3,000 wild tigers left on this planet our work to protect them, and their cousins in Thailand and Russia, is a crucial part of ensuring a sustainable future for wild tigers and the forest homes that are so vital to all of us for the oxygen they create and the water they sequester. 

Thank you again for supporting our work in Kaziranga, saving this landscape and its wildlife is invaluable to the bigger picture of tiger survival on Earth.

During 2016 we will bring you more news about how your contributions are helping to make a big difference for Kaziranga's tigers.

Links:

• The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation's TigerTime Campaign