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WWF 1998 Tiger Status Report: Year For The Tiger

Tigers In The Wild



WWF Opens Chinese Year Of The Tiger With New Initiative To Help Save Species

January 22nd, 1998

GLAND, Switzerland.- As preparations get underway for celebrating the Chinese Year of the Tiger starting January 28, WWF-- World Wide Fund for Nature announced today an International Action Plan for making 1998 the year for the tiger. 

The new plan gives priority to  setting up an "Emergency Rapid Response Fund for Tiger Conservation." The fund, which aims  to start up with an initial capital endowment of US$1 million, aims to tackle a wide range of urgent tiger conservation problems -- from countering sudden rises in the incidence of poaching, to legal challenges to development projects or policies which threaten to destroy tiger habitat.

"The situation for tigers is becoming increasingly precarious and we need to put tiger conservation on a more urgent footing," said Dr Jean-Pierre d'Huart, manager of WWF's Species Conservation Unit. "Their populations are reaching such low levels in some parts of their range that the death of every tiger is another nail in the coffin of the species as a whole. We believe that this emergency fund is a crucial element in our battle to save the tigers," he added.  "It will provide a quick, flexible and transparent mechanism for an effective deployment of resources where they are most critically needed."

Tigers are one the three key species identified in WWF's Living Planet Campaign.  A new WWF Status Report released today warns that unless a series of  urgent, immediate and long-term actions are taken to protect existing tiger populations, there will be very few of the magnificent felines left to ring in the next Year of the Tiger in 2010.      

The WWF Tiger Status Report: 1998 Year for the Tiger outlines a dramatic 95 percent decline in tiger numbers over the last 100 years.  In just 50 years, three of the eight subspecies of tigers -- the Bali, Caspian and Javan tigers -- have already gone extinct, and the South China tiger risks the same fate as only 20 or 30 are known to remain in the wild (down from an estimated 4,000 in the 1950s). Altogether there are anywhere between 5,000 and 7,500 tigers left in the wild, mainly in national parks and  protected areas. Outside these areas, they stand little chance of survival.    

Tiger experts surveyed about the future of tigers ranged from gloomy to hopeful. According to Valmik Thapar, vice-chair of the Cat Specialist Group of IUCN-The World Conservation Union and director of the Ranthambhore Foundation, the situation in India, home to about 3,000 tigers (representing  half the world's tiger population), is everyday more critical.  "If we fail to win some of today's battles," he said, "tigers will be virtually extinct by the time of the next Year of the Tiger".

Nevertheless, experts from other regions of the tiger range are more optimistic.  "In the last four years, we have made tremendous progress in the battle against tiger poachers," said Pavel Fomenko, coordinator of WWF's Amur Tiger Conservation Programme.  "If we succeed, there will be a future in 2010 for the tiger and all the nature it represents."

The greatest threats to tigers are the increasing pressures of explosive growth in human populations leading to encroachment on tiger habitats and steady habitat destruction, as well as the poaching and illegal trade in tigers and tiger parts for use in traditional Chinese medicine  (TCM).

Over 140 countries are members of CITES, the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora, whose listing of all the subspecies of tigers in its Appendix I establishes a ban on trade in tigers and tiger parts. All 14 states where tigers live (except Lao PDR) and all TCM consumer countries are members of CITES and are committed to upholding the ban.  Nevertheless, tiger poaching remains a lucrative business in response to the huge demand for TCM.

WWF, along with its wildlife trade monitoring programme, TRAFFIC, plans to intensify its activities of monitoring the illegal trade in tiger parts as well as stepping up its support to anti-poaching activities in tiger habitats. In December, TRAFFIC organized an International Symposium on Endangered Species Use in Traditional East Asian Medicine in Hong Kong -- part of its continuing dialogue with practitioners and consumers of these medicines to find culturally sensitive solutions to the problem, such as the use of effective alternatives to tiger bone in such medicines. Judy Mills, director of TRAFFIC East Asia Programme, said, "If the new-found interest of the TCM community in tiger conservation grows, the threat from tiger bone trade could disappear long before the tiger does."

WWF began its involvement in tiger conservation in 1966 and currently has over 35 projects in most of the tiger range states and TCM-consuming countries.  In addition to the Emergency Rapid Response Fund, WWF's  action plan for this Year of the Tiger also includes supporting CITES training workshops in Indochina and the Russian Far East to help fight the illegal trade in tiger parts in those areas.  WWF is also planning to send a fact-finding mission to the Sundarbans area in Bangladesh which, along with its Indian counterpart, is considered to contain have one of the largest populations of Bengal tigers.  WWF hopes to be able to generate policies and activities leading to a halt on rampant poaching and tiger habitat destruction there.

For more information, please contact:
Javier Arreaza, WWF International,
at tel. +41 22 364 9550,
e-mail jarreaza@wwf.org,
or fax +41 22 364 8307.

You may get a copy of the WWF Tiger Status Report: 1998 Year for the Tiger by calling WWF International at +41 22 364 9424.

TV footage on tigers is available from the WWF TV Centre in Zeist, The Netherlands, tel. +31 30 69 37 385.