December 2022

Dear Friends:                                                                                                   

 Good news out of Nepal in celebration of International Tiger Day, July 30th. Nepal's tiger population has grown from 121 to 355 individuals since 2009, according to the results of a national tiger and prey survey published on Friday by the country's National Trust for Nature Conservation. This substantial growth: 190-percent increase in population size, is the result of Nepal's protection of tiger habitats and corridors, its collaboration with local communities and strict enforcement against poaching and illegal animal trade. Tigers were found well beyond the bounds of tiger reserves, which accounts, in part, for the alarming increase in tiger-human conflict.

Nepal’s tiger conservation efforts have been largely hailed at home and abroad, even if the success has come at significant human cost. A report out of Nepal highlighted both the success of tiger conservation while addressing the importance of community support citing tiger-human conflict. The Government of Nepal has established a “Human Wildlife Rescue and Relief Fund” with the aim of conserving tigers while reducing human-wildlife conflicts in buffer zones of national parks and forest areas. “The fund can be helpful in finding livelihood alternatives for those who heavily rely on forest products,” said Ram Chandra Kandel, Director General of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. Experts say there is a need to strike a fine balance between preserving human lives while protecting the animals .”

In August, we received an excellent report from the ground-breaking, community-based tiger conservation effort [Participatory Anti-Poaching Unit- PAPU] we began under Dr. Bhim Gurung’s vision in 2009 at Bardia National Park. This is at Dalla, in the Khatta Corridor, a vast swath of land that connects prime tiger habitat between the southern jungles of Nepal and the forests of northern India:

 “This project has been particularly focused to control illegal poaching of wildlife in the corridor forest and southern buffer zone of Bardia National Park by involving village youths in anti-poaching operations with the collaboration of Bardia National Park and armed security forces. From 3 villages, a total of 256 youths have been mobilized with the generous support from The Fund for The Tiger to conduct a regular anti-poaching operation in the buffer zone of Bardia National Park and Khatta corridor. There have been no poaching records of tiger, elephant, and rhino from the PAPU working area, and the movement of the tiger has drastically increased in the corridor forest.”

 On October 10th we renewed our commitment to the Long-Term Tiger Monitoring project we have been supporting for years. The LTTM project is an extension of the tiger monitoring work started in 1977 by Smithsonian Associate Dr. Charles McDougal. Our consultant on this, Dr. Bhim Gurung, wrote to us in late September, “These past few months, as part of LTTM project, I have been working with the National Trust for Nature Conservation and other partners to implement TrailGuard AI cameras to monitor tigers, human and/or other species. We plan on implementing the cameras in November in high human-tiger conflict areas first starting in Chitwan, then Bardia/Banke and Suklaphanta.”

 On November 30th we received a report from the Wildlife Protection Society of India:

 “In the last five months, WPSI’s Tiger Conservation Awareness program in Central India has reached out to 924 villages and 323 weekly markets. They have distributed 52,526 cards on WPSI's Secret Information Reward Scheme, put up 38 posters on the Maharashtra Anti-Electrocution Reward Scheme, and briefed 1,450 participants during Wildlife Week. This sensitization effort, together with the work of WPSI's Tiger Poaching and Trade Investigation program, resulted in the registration of seven WPSI-assisted wildlife crime cases and the arrest of 20 alleged criminals throughout India. In addition, Nitin Desai held four capacity building trainings for 190 Forest Department personnel, and our Field Officer assisted in the investigations into four tiger and six leopard death cases in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. India now has about 3,000 wild tigers that continue to face a myriad of threats – from poaching and human-tiger conflict to habitat degradation due to rampant infrastructure development. India should have a clearer picture of the status of its tiger populations by next year, when the on-going tiger census exercise is complete. We are hopeful that recent conservation measures such as the notification of two new Tiger Reserves, and the collaborative efforts of various organizations will help give tigers a chance for a secure future. WPSI is immensely grateful to Brian Weirum and The Fund for The Tiger for their generous support to safeguard tigers and their habitats in India.”

In spite of international politics swirling around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Global Tiger Summit was held the first week of September in Vladivostok.  Though sparsely attended and without the fanfare attached to the last tiger summit in St. Petersburg, 2010, representatives from 13 tiger range nations were in attendance. One point in their Summary Declaration caught our attention: “We express serious concern that there is still no comprehensive strategy to address the issue of phasing out tiger farms while their impact on driving illegal tiger trade continues unabated.” Keshev Varma, Executive Director of the Global Tiger initiative, discussed the question of tiger farming after his official presentation and gave a summary answer which mirrors what we and others have been arguing for over 20 years: there is no proven medical value to tiger parts in medicine; where tiger farms are thriving, tigers in the wild have gone extinct; farming tigers does not save wild tigers but stimulates demand for their parts, because the true believer will always prefer wild to farmed. At least at this tiger summit, the issue of farming tigers as a commodity was openly discussed.