285 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS

Integrative Zoology 2010; 5: 285-299

REVIEW
Saving wild tigers: A case study in biodiversity loss and challenges
to be met for recovery beyond 2010
John SEIDENSTICKER
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park, Washington, DC, USA
Abstract
Wild tigers are being annihilated. Tiger range countries and their partners met at the 1st Asian Ministerial Confer-
ence on Tiger Conservation in January 2010 to mandate the creation of the Global Tiger Recovery Program to
double the number of tigers by 2022. Only 32003600 wild adult tigers remain, approximately half of the popula-
tion estimated a decade ago. Tigers now live in only 13 countries, all of which are experiencing severe environmen-
tal challenges and degradation from the effects of human population growth, brisk economic expansion, rapid
urbanization, massive infrastructure development and climate change. The overarching challenge of tiger
conservation, and the conservation of biodiversity generally, is that there is insufficient demand for the survival of
wild tigers living in natural landscapes. This allows the criminal activities of poaching wild tigers and their prey
and trafficking in tiger derivatives to flourish and tiger landscapes to be diminished. The Global Tiger Recovery
Program will support scaling up of practices already proven effective in one or more tiger range countries that need
wider policy support, usually resources, and new transnational actions that enhance the effectiveness of individual
country actions. The program is built on robust National Tiger Recovery Priorities that are grouped into themes: (i)
strengthening policies that protect tigers; (ii) protecting tiger conservation landscapes; (iii) scientific management
and monitoring; (iv) engaging communities; (v) cooperative management of international tiger landscapes; (vi)
eliminating transnational illegal wildlife trade; (vii) persuading people to stop consuming tiger; (viii) enhancing
professional capacity of policy-makers and practitioners; and (ix) developing sustainable, long-term financing
mechanisms for tiger and biodiversity conservation.
Key words: Asia, biodiversity, Global Tiger Recovery Program, Panthera tigris, Tiger Conservation Landscape.
Correspondence: John Seidensticker, Smithsonian Conservation
Biology Institute, National Zoological Park, PO Box 37012, MRC
5503, Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA.
Email: seidenstickerj@si.edu
INTRODUCTION
The tiger (Panthera tigris Linnaeus, 1758) is a mem-
ber of that small group of animals that have nearly uni-
versal instant recognition and enormous public appeal and
empathy, the charismatic megafauna (Fig. 1). The tiger
was declared endangered in 1969, yet in this Year of the
Tiger: 20102011, it is distressing to witness that wild
tigers are still being annihilated.
The decline of wild tigers and their habitats (Fig. 2)
exemplifies the broader crisis of biodiversity loss. There
were 3.4 billion people living in the tigers geographical
range in Asia in 2008, approximately twice the number of
people that were living there 40 years ago when the tiger
was first declared endangered (United Nations 2008). Ti-
gers now live in only 13 countries (tiger range countries
[TRCs]: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India,
Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thai-
doi: 10.1111/j.1749-4877.2010.00214.x
286 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
land and Vietnam), all of which are experiencing profound
economic growth. Average per-capita GDP doubled be-
tween 1999 and 2006, with expanding markets fueled by
increasingly wealthy consumers (United Nations 2007).
The effects of rapid urbanization, environmental
degradation, increasing demand for natural resources,
massive infrastructure expansion and climate change have
placed unprecedented pressure on remaining tiger habi-
tats and biodiversity (McNeely 1997; Sodhi et al. 2004;
Shahabuddin 2010).
Nevertheless, the TRCs have committed to stabilizing
and recovering their wild tigers. The overarching goal of
the 1st Asian Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conserva-
tion (AMCTC) held in Thailand in January 2010 was to:
Save wild tigers and their principal habitats across Asia
and secure the tigers future (AMCTC 2010). During this
conference, senior officials and environmental ministers
of the TRCs pledged to make commitments and to carry
out management interventions to double the number of
wild tigers (TX2) over the next 12 years (AMCTC 2010).
The challenges are daunting, but can be overcome.
In this review, I will sketch the forces that are over-
whelming wild tigers, outline challenges and best prac-
tices to increase the demand for live wild tigers and to
reduce the demand for dead tigers, summarize our under-
standing of tiger ecology and the conditions needed to
sustain and recovery tiger population and detail the basic
program elements of the Global Tiger Recovery Program
(GRTP) that has been developed under a mandate from
the AMCTC.
TIGERS OVERWHELMED
Over the past 200 years, wild tiger populations have
declined by more than 98% in the Indian Subcontinent
(Mondol et al. 2009) and probably by the same percent-
age through the rest of the tigers range. Wild tiger popu-
lations have declined by at least half over the last decade
alone, with the current number estimated to be approxi-
mately 32003600 (cubs not included) (GTRP 2010).
We are witness to the tigers geographic range collapse.
The edge populations (subspecies) were the first to be
extirpated: the Bali tiger (P. tigris balica) in the 1940s,
the Caspian tiger (P. tigris virgata) in the 1960s, the Javan
tiger (P. tigris sondaica) in the 1970s and the South China
tiger (P. tigris amoyensis) probably during the 1990s.
Dinerstein et al. (2007) estimate that tigers occupied only
7% of their historical range by 2006, based on the tigers
historical range constructed by Nowell and Jackson
(1996); in the decade from 1996 to 2006 alone, the esti-
mated area of tiger range occupancy had declined by 41%.
Based on the most recent estimates from TRCs (GTRP
2010), approximately 2000 of the remaining tigers are
Bengal tigers (P. tigris tigris) living in the Indian
subcontinent. Fewer that 400 of the last island-living ti-
gers (P. tigris sumatrae) survive on Sumatra. Peninsular
Malaysia is home to approximately 500 Malayan tigers
(P. tigris jacksoni). Approximately 300 Indochinese ti-
gers (P. tigris corbetti) live in Cambodia, China, Lao,
Myanmar and Thailand. No more than 400 adult Amur
tigers (P. tigris altaica) inhabit North East China and the
Russian Far East, with 95 percent of those living in Russia.
Sanderson et al. (2010), in the most comprehensive
analysis ever attempted of the present range occupancy
of a large, cryptic, terrestrial mammal living at low density,
identified 1 185 000 km of occupied and potential tiger
habitat remaining in 2006. This had been fractured into
76 units that these scientists called Tiger Conservation
Landscapes (TCLs) (Fig. 2). TCLs were defined as areas
where: (i) there is sufficient habitat for a least 5 tigers;
and (ii) tigers have been confirmed to occur in the past 10
years. A TCL is a contained tiger metapopulation; there is
little to no potential for dispersal of tigers between TCLs
without habitat recovery. A metapopulation is a collec-
tion of populations that is discontinuous in distribution in
partially isolated habitat patches where movement of
individuals between patches is restricted (Frankham et al.
2010). Roughly half of all TCLs are large enough to sup-
port 100 or more tigers, with the 7 largest TCLs offering
the potential to support 500 or more tigers.
The tiger occupancy data used in the Sanderson et al.
(2010) analysis was supplied by on-the-ground observers,
gathered over the previous decade, and coupled with re-
Figure 1 Adult female tiger (Panthera tigris) in the tropical
dry forest habitat in the Panna Tiger Reserve, India, in 2004,
before tigers were extirpated from the reserve by poachers.
J. Seidensticker
287 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
cent land-cover data. Sanderson et al. also report that
poaching pressure on both tigers and prey had depressed
tiger populations in most of these landscapes, even in the
most protected areas, to far below carrying capacity when
compared to historical information. Much of the analysis
in Sanderson et al. was undertaken in 20042006, and
further observations and consultation with tiger range
country experts have led to the horrific realization that
there might be no remaining ecologically functioning ti-
ger populations (a population so reduced that it no longer
plays a significant role in ecosystem function or the popu-
lation is no longer viable without direct management
interventions) in Cambodia and Vietnam. Furthermore,
more than 33% of the TCLs identified in 2006 might have
lost their tigers completely, or tiger numbers have been
depressed to the point where the populations are probably
no longer ecologically functional (GTRP 2010). However,
the considerable land cover that remains in some of these
landscapes might still support tiger population recoveries
if there is good protection of tigers, prey and habitat. Other
TCLs will require more intense interventions, such as ti-
ger translocations from areas where there are sustainable
tiger populations to areas where tigers have been extir-
pated but still have adequate prey, or prey numbers can
Saving wild tigers
Figure 2 Historic and present distribution tiger conservation landscapes. Approximately 2000 adult tigers remain in the Indian
subcontinent; fewer than 400 in Sumatra; approximately 500 in Peninsular Malaysia; approximately 300 Indochinese tigers remain
in Cambodia, China, Lao, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam; and no more than 400 Amur tigers remain in North East China and the
Russian Far East, with 95% living in Russia. Figure courtesy of the WWF-US, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Smithsonian
Conservation Biology Institute.
288 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
be recovered.
In another recent analysis, Walston et al. (2010) esti-
mate there are 2200 tigers residing in 42 source sites (core
protected tiger breeding areas) with a total area of 90 000
km. These scientists also recognize that the number of
tigers in many of these source sites is depressed well be-
low the potential capacity of those sites to support tiger
prey and tigers. If the source sites are effectively protected,
they estimate that there is the potential to double the num-
ber of tigers living in them, to 4400. A second analysis by
Dinerstein (2009) identifies 103 867 km in 62 core pro-
tected tiger breeding areas in 16 TLCs, which, if fully
protected and if habitat and prey are fully recovered,
could support 3200 tigers. By adding adjacent protected
areas to the analysis, protected areas between which ti-
gers could move, the total number of protected areas in-
creased to 115 in 135 500 km that could be secured, re-
stored and managed to support approximately 4700 tigers
(Fig. 3).
Without full protection of core breeding sites, there can
be no tiger recovery. However, an essential finding from
both of the above analyses is that, even with complete
protection, core breeding sites/source sites alone cannot
reach the goal of doubling the number of tigers. Doubling
the number of tigers will require expanding effective pro-
tection to entire landscapes where tigers have been greatly
reduced in numbers.
According to the analysis by Sanderson et al. (2010),
there were 36 Class I TCLs defined as having a known
tiger breeding population, sufficient prey base, sufficient
habitat area to support 100+ tigers, threat levels lower than
50% compared to other TCLs and higher conservation
effectiveness compared to other TCLs. A scenario projec-
tion by Wikramanayake et al. (2010) of the impacts of
continued habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation at
the 2006 rate in TCLs illustrates that the number of Class
I TCLs will decrease from 16 to only 6 over the next
decade, with a 43% reduction in habitat area, confining
Figure 3 Of the 1.2 million km of po-
tential tiger habitat in Tiger Conservation
Landscapes, 62 core protected tiger
breeding areas and 115 adjacent protected
areas totaling 135 500 km will need to
be secured, restored and managed to sup-
port approximately 4700 tigers. Reach-
ing the target of 7000 adult tigers will
require that additional areas be secured.
Figure courtesy of the WWF-US.
J. Seidensticker
289 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
wild tigers to only 3% of their historic range. However, if
connectivity between core areas is improved in these
TCLs, there is potential to link core areas within TCLs
and also to link adjacent TCLs to create larger landscapes.
Across the tiger range, these restored TCLs represent >1.
5 million km
2
of tiger habitat, increasing the range to 10%
of the historic range. Although this is a broad-brush
analysis, there is potential for improving and restoring
habitat connectivity across the tigers range with judicious
and strategic habitat restoration, protection, zoning and
land management.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE CONSERVATION
RESPONSE
A summary of the best conservation practices and the
challenges to be met to increase the demand for live wild
tigers and to reduce the demand for dead tigers is pre-
sented in Table 1.
Mounting threats and challenges to tiger conser-
vation
The tiger was declared endangered at the 1969 Inter-
national Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources meeting in New Delhi, although the critically
endangered status of the tiger had been recognized in the
Russian Far East dating back to the 1940s (Miquelle et
al. 2010a). Today, tigers live in human-dominated land-
scapes and our conservation prescriptions and actions
have to adjust to these conditions (Seidensticker et al.
1999). There is no wild frontier left in Asia where ti-
Table 1 Best practices and conservation challenges to increase demand for live wild tigers while reducing demand for dead tigers,
summarized from the Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP 2010)
to be continued
Saving wild tigers
290 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
gers can roam unaffected by human influences (Sanderson
et al. 2010).
Throughout the 1970s, most TRC worked through es-
tablished administrative services (e. g. forestry
departments) to initiate programs that included all or part
of the following conservation remedies (summarized from
Seidensticker 1986, 1997): (i) enforcing moratoriums on
sport hunting for tigers; (ii) implementing national policy
continued
J. Seidensticker
291 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
declarations and laws protecting tigers; (iii) upgrading and
expanding existing protected areas; (iv) establishing new
protected areas; (v) strengthening administrative support
through increased staff allocations, staff training,
equipment, and facilities; (vi) putting into effect outreach
projects to inform other administrative services, politicians
and the public of the plight of wildlife, and the tiger
specifically; (vii) carrying out surveys to determine tiger
distributions and abundance; and (viii) undertaking basic
research projects on tiger habitats, prey needs, and popu-
lation structure and dynamics. Many TRCs became par-
ties to the new Convention on International Trade in En-
dangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora when it came
online in the mid-1970s. All have done so today. No wild-
life conservation program in Asia has been comparable to
the extent and magnitude of the effort devoted to saving
the tiger.
By the late 1980s, many new challenges, not addressed
initially by authorities engaged in saving the tiger, were
emerging to confound tiger conservation efforts. The
overarching challenge of tiger conservation and the con-
servation of biodiversity generally, is that there this is
insufficient demand for the survival of wild tigers living
in natural landscapes. This allows the criminal activities
of poaching wild tigers and trafficking in their deriva-
tives to flourish and tiger landscapes to be diminished.
Therefore, to save the tiger, wild tigers must be turned
from an economic liability into a living asset.
The underlying complexities obstructing tiger
conservation, and the conservation of Asian biodiversity
in general, have been sketched out by McNeely (1997),
Damania et al. (2008) and Kawanishi and Seidensticker
(2010): once highly centralized, political power was be-
ing more broadly shared with regions and provinces
within nations. This confounded top-down programs di-
rected by central governments, such as those instituted
in 1973 in India through Project Tiger, with the enthusi-
astic support of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi as its very
powerful patron (Task Force, Indian Board for Wildlife
1972). In addition to increasing demand for tiger parts
and products, there was a surge in demand for timber and
plantation agricultural products, such as palm oil, lead-
ing to the wide-scale conversion of forests (Sohngen et
al. 1999). These new global demands were added to lo-
cal demands for land and resources from tiger forests.
These expanded economic priorities lowered governmen-
tal priorities for conservation, including saving the tiger.
The institutions supporting tiger conservation were also
weak and weighed down with inadequately trained man-
power and insufficient resources, and were ill-prepared
to take on wildlife and forest protection and the mentoring
responsibility for creating sustainable livelihoods for lo-
cal people who were displaced by some tiger conserva-
tion programs (Barrett et al. 2001). Most protected areas
designated for tigers still had (and still have) substantial
numbers of people living in them engaged in unsustain-
able activities (Narain et al. 2005). The widespread deci-
mation of tiger prey in many tiger forests, and in pro-
tected areas themselves, became apparent (Redford 1992;
Robinson & Bodmer 1999). Tiger poaching was being
driven by demand for tiger parts and products from far
beyond the boundaries of tiger reserves, or even TRCs
themselves, but by newly wealthy markets in Asia, and
globally (Mills & Jackson 1994; TRAFFIC 2008). Con-
trolling these global markets was not possible through
local law enforcement acting alone; a global response
was required.
Findings from the newly-founded academic discipline
of conservation biology have shown that long-term per-
sistence of extinction-prone species, such as tigers, re-
quires areas that are much larger than most of those ini-
tially demarcated as protected areas in the TRCs
(Seidensticker 1986, 1987; Dinerstein & Wikramanayake
1993; Soule & Terborgh 1999). As Damania et al. (2008,
9) have stressed: With large and permeable boundaries,
an exclusive reliance on punitive approaches and plan-
ning will not suffice. The evidence suggests that a con-
servation model that resists development and growth
will be overwhelmed and undermined by the forces it
opposes. A new paradigm for conservation must rec-
ognize that those who live with the tiger determine its
fate. Learning how this can be achieved remains a for-
midable challenge.
By the mid-1990s, the tiger had been declared
doomed by many in the international media because of
a major surge in poaching that was detected when indi-
vidually recognizable tigers disappeared from supposedly
well-protected areas like Chitwan National Park in Nepal
and Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in India (Kenney et al.
1995). We were into the throes of this so-called second
tiger crisis in February 1997 when the Tigers: 2000 sym-
posium was held at the Zoological Society of London
(Seidensticker et al. 1999). At this meeting, it was reaf-
firmed that: (i) persistent hunting of tigers and their prey,
and the trade in tiger parts and products required ongoing
and greatly enhanced individual, institutional and organi-
zational commitments along the whole demand chain from
source site, to consumer, to reducing demand driven by
cultural traditions, and that meeting this challenge required
a local and an international response; and (ii) reserved
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292 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
Table 2 Summary of tiger ecology and conservation needs
J. Seidensticker
293 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
lands, such as tiger reserves and national parks, are es-
sential to protect tiger breeding populations. Without this
core stabilizing force, we would be building tiger conser-
vation efforts on quicksand. However, we appear to have
reached a threshold in the effective performance of the
protected area conservation systems, because some pro-
tection systems have reached the financial and human re-
source limits that TRCs are willing to provide (Holloway
1978).
A landscape conservation paradigm for tigers
The new conservation paradigm, highlighted at the
symposium, was that for tiger conservation be successful
in the long term it had to be approached from the broader
landscape perspective (see Sanderson et al. 2002). Popu-
lations of tigers and their prey must be managed at a land-
scape scale that includes core areas of protection, buffer
zones, dispersal corridors, sustainable management and
protection of selectively logged forests (Linkie et al. 2008;
Rayan & Mohamad 2010), and the restoration of degraded
lands, coupled with initiatives through which the conser-
vation of tigers directly or indirectly meets the needs of
local people. This ecological approach to conserving ti-
gers recognizes not only their genetic distinctiveness
across their range but also behavioral, demographic and
ecological distinctiveness. It recognizes the value of ti-
gers as top predators in ecosystems and their role as um-
brella species for conservation of other species and eco-
logical processes. It recognizes the need to provide in-
centives to local people who live near tigers to protect
tigers and tiger prey.
In retrospect, I believe that there was no first or second
tiger crisis. We have witnessed the unfolding catastrophe
of a magnificent predators steady slide to extinction. Ti-
ger conservation actions to date might have slowed the
tigers downward slide, but it continues.
WHAT TIGERS NEED
We need a clear understanding of what tigers need to
persist and recover for us to be able to identify and priori-
tize our response to the conservation challenges that keep
emerging. The first scientific study of wild tigers was not
published until 1967. George Schaller, the author of that
work, noted that, until then the natural history of the
tiger has been studied predominately along the sights of a
rifle (Schaller 1967, 221). Since then, our knowledge
of tiger life history, ecology, behavior and population dy-
namics has continued to expand. The basics of the tigers
ecology and conservation needs are summarized in Table
2. In what follows, I highlight the factors controlling tiger
density and population resilience.
What controls tiger numbers?
Monitoring data have established that tiger densities
vary naturally in response to differing prey densities by a
factor of approximately 40, from fewer than 0.5 per 100
km (tigers 1 year of age or older) in the temperate forest
of the Russian Far East and some tropical rain forests to
more than 20 per 100 km in the prey-rich floodplain
savannahs and riverine forests of Nepal and India (Carbone
et al. 2001; Karanth et al. 2004; Karanth et al. 2006;
Barlow et al. 2009; Miquelle et al. 2010b). In the absence
of tiger poaching, prey abundance determines tiger num-
bers (Karanth et al. 2004).
The conservation implications of these ecological dif-
ferences in the capacity of different biomes and the pro-
ductivity of various habitats within biomes to support ti-
ger prey are immense, as Miquelle et al. (2010b) point
out. For example, the largest strictly protected area in the
Russian Far East is 4000 km, yet it supports fewer than
30 tigers, half of which regularly use areas outside the
boundaries of the reserve (Miquelle et al. 2010b). A simi-
lar-sized reserve in prey-rich Indian floodplains or moist
tropical forest would support 800 tigers in an ideal setting.
These ecological statistics indicate that tiger recovery in
the Russian Far East will require very large landscapes
with strict protection of prey and tigers beyond the pro-
tected areas themselves.
The numbers also indicate that viable tiger populations
could be conserved in core areas in prey-rich habitat in
the Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately, most are <1000
km, and fewer yet contain a majority of the optimal habi-
tat needed to support a large number of breeding female
tigers (Ranganathan et al. 2008). The Indian subcontinent
is packed with people and Indian tiger reserves have thou-
sands of people living inside them (Narain et al. 2005).
This reality necessitates a landscape approach to connect
smaller core protected areas nested within larger land-
scapes (Gopal et al. 2010). Therefore, the natural ecologi-
cal parameters and the impacts of human-dominated land-
uses have combined, conspired and pushed us to pursue a
landscape approach to conserving tigers.
What controls the probability of tiger
population persistence?
The eventual fate of tiger populations depends on the
extent and character of the environments in which they
live and the human social and political structure in which
they are embedded (Walker & Salt 2006). Resilience is
the ability of a particular animal population or ecological
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294 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
system to absorb stress or changes, such as poaching
pressure, habitat quality deterioration and fragmentation,
and still retain its basic function and structure and persist.
For example, if tigers occurred as a single population, or
better, as 3 large populations for redundancy, that totaled
3600 adult tigers, we would be less concerned because
larger populations are more resilient, both genetically and
demographically, than small, fragmented populations.
However, fragmentation is the norm for the remaining
wild tigers, with the fragments now dispersed through-
out their once-vast range (Sanderson et al. 2010). Small
populations are highly vulnerable to ecological and an-
thropogenic stressors of habitat loss and degradation, and
poaching (Soule & Terborgh 1999).
Poaching can decimate or eliminate a tiger population,
despite high prey densities (Gopal et al. 2010). Popula-
tion modeling by Chaperon et al. (2008) illustrates that
while high prey numbers are essential to sustain tiger
populations, prey recovery efforts will not be sufficient if
tiger mortality rates reach or exceed 15%. Even a popula-
tion with 15% mortality among the breeding females re-
quires more than 80 breeding females to remain viable.
However, if the survivorship of the breeding females ap-
proaches 100%, tiger populations can grow at an annual
rate of approximately 20%. This dynamic has been well
exemplified in the population extirpations in many parts
of the tiger range, including from protected areas in Bali
and Java, Indonesia (Seidensticker 1987) and, more
recently, in Cambodia, Lao, Thailand and Vietnam, and
from some of Indias premier, but small tiger reserves
(Gopal et al. 2010; GTRP 2010).
When the network of protected areas was developed in
tiger habitat over the last half century, most of the pro-
tected areas were nestled in landscape matrices that in-
cluded suitable tiger dispersal routes to other sites. Today,
many of these same protected areas have been isolated as
islands in a sea of land-use areas and infrastructure that
stop or greatly restrict tiger dispersal. This has enormous
negative implications for the tigers long-term persistence,
not only in tiger landscapes, but even within protected
areas themselves (Sanderson et al. 2010; Seidensticker et
al. 2010).
Dispersal in the Nepal tiger population has been stud-
ied in detail by Smith (1993). Dispersal is the movement
of a tiger from where it was born to its first or subsequent
breeding site. Dispersal plays a critical role in tiger popu-
lation dynamics because recruitment into a local popula-
tion is strongly supported by immigration from adjacent
populations, while many of the populations own offspring
emigrate to other areas. In the terminology of
metapopulation dynamics, source tiger populations are
those in which the number of young produced exceeds
mortality. Population sink areas are those in which mor-
tality exceeds reproductive output; they are not self-sus-
taining and rely on immigration from source populations
to persist. However, these population sink areas can also
serve as dispersal corridors for tigers, usually young adults,
as they move between source populations. Sink areas are
also important in allowing sub-adults and other non-terri-
tory holding adults in source populations to disperse, and
minimize intra-sexual conflict that can disrupt the social
structure. Infanticide is a significant disruptive factor when
adult males are unable to disperse out of small, isolated
source sites and have to fight for limited territorial spaces.
These dynamics are summarized in Table 2.
RECOVERING TIGER POPULATIONS
To address the looming biodiversity crisis and to make
tigers the face of biodiversity, the World Bank, the Glo-
bal Environmental Facility, the Smithsonian Institution
and other partners launched the Global Tiger Initiative
(GTI 2009) in June 2008. Since then, the GTI has become
an alliance of governments, including all 13 TRCs, inter-
national organizations and civil society, coordinated by a
small GTI Secretariat hosted by the World Bank. The alli-
ance was deepened at a global workshop in Nepal in Oc-
tober 2009, at which the partners shared best practices
and developed the Kathmandu Recommendations for scal-
ing up those best practices to achieve real conservation
progress on the ground (GTI 2009). This led to the
AMCTC in Thailand in January 2010, where the Hua Hin
Declaration committed TRCs to accelerating priority na-
tional actions and charged the international community
with undertaking efforts to support the TRCs where is-
sues transcend national boundaries, with an emphasis on
stopping the illegal wildlife trade (AMCTC 2010). The
Hua Hin Declaration required commitments to: (i) policy
changes and other activities to make critical habitats and
core areas that support tiger source populations inviolate
with no economic development permitted; (ii) identify
buffer zones and corridors for tiger conservation and en-
sure their integrity through assessment of proposed infra-
structure and other land-altering economic development
and appropriate mitigations (such as Smart Green
Infrastructure, Quintero et al. 2009); (iii) mainstream ti-
ger concerns through sectoral integration; and (iv) foster
trans-boundary TCL management to benefit tigers. The
Hua Hin Declaration also set the global goal of doubling
the number of wild tigers by 2022, and endorsed the plan
for a Tiger Summit to be held in Russia.
J. Seidensticker
295 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
After a series of National Consultations during which
TRCs developed their National Tiger Recovery Priorities,
the partners met in Bali in July 2010 to endorse the con-
cept of the GTRP, which is built on the National Tiger
Recovery Priorities and associated Global Support
Programs. The GTRP will be launched at an unprecedented
Heads of Governments Tiger Summit in November 2010,
hosted by Russian Prime Minister Putin in Saint Peters-
burg with the strong support of World Bank President
Robert Zoellick.
These milestones, and the GTRP (2010), are a result
of all 13 TRCs and the international community working
together for the first time on a cooperative platform, shar-
ing knowledge and experience and developing a collabo-
rative program to achieve a global goal. There has never
been a comparable comprehensive, costed-out, range-
country-driven effort to save a species and the valuable
ecosystems in which it lives for the benefit of current
and future generations of people. The GTRP will support
scaling up practices already proven effective in one or
more TRC that need wider policy support, usually
resources, and new transnational actions that enhance the
effectiveness of individual TRC actions. The GTRP is
built on the foundation of robust National Tiger Recov-
ery Priorities developed by each TRC that are grouped
into 10 themes: strengthen policies that protect tigers,
landscape protection, scientific management and
monitoring, community engagement, cooperative man-
agement of international tiger landscapes, help TRCs
eliminate the huge transnational illegal wildlife trade,
persuade people to stop consuming tigers, enhance pro-
fessional capacity of policy-makers and practitioners, and
develop sustainable long-term financing mechanisms for
conservation.
The broad outline of the GTRP (2010) is as follows:
1. The unrelenting poaching pressure to supply the in-
creasing demand for tiger parts and products, driven
by increased wealth in the global tiger-consuming sec-
tor (Gratwicke et al. 2008; TRAFFIC 2008), requires
full attention by all TRCs and globally to enforce ex-
isting laws and to create effective demand-reduction
mechanisms. Attempts at demand reduction have only
been partially effective to date. This goes concurrently
with providing effective protection to tigers by increas-
ing management effectiveness in protected core areas,
increasing the extent of protected core tiger habitats,
such as has recently been done for the Hukaung Val-
ley Tiger Sanctuary in Myanmar (Wildlife Conserva-
tion Society 2010) and the Banke National Park in
Nepal (DNPWC 2010), and linking protected core ti-
ger habitats with corridors that enable tigers to move
between the core habitats.
2. Pockets of poverty surround and are embedded in
TCLs. Programs are required to address the eco-
nomic needs of communities living around wild ti-
ger populations and to gain local support for con-
servation through participatory engagement in sus-
taining natural resources as well as development of
sustainable alternative livelihoods.
3. Tiger range countries own economic development
goals, which might entail achieving 10% per annum,
are driving landscape transformations, and are over-
whelming the institutional architecture (protected area
systems, governance and resourcing) established in the
1970s to protect tigers. The old conservation architec-
ture requires remodeling, and the old strategies need a
paradigm shift to meet the current and emerging
challenges. This necessitates capacity building, new
knowl edge-shari ng pl at forms and i mproved
governance.
4. The challenge of managing core protected areas is in
restricting uses inside the areas and stabilizing threats
outside the areas that spill in. However, even within
protected areas, conflict with humans is a significant
cause of tiger and human mortality (Gurung et al.
2008). Significant mortality occurs when tigers range
beyond the borders of core protected areas, and this
requires mitigating carnivore persecution on the edges
of protected core areas and in buffer zones (Woodroffe
& Ginsberg 1998; Miquelle et al. 2010b).
5. Although the goal in tiger conservation is to create
core protected areas that are buffered and linked to
other core protected areas, in fact, many people live
within their borders and these people rely on resources
from these areas for their livelihood. Most Indian ti-
ger reserves and protected area systems in Bhutan, In-
donesia and Malaysia are examples. The conservation
challenge is to reduce the human footprint in the pro-
tected core breeding areas. This is fully recognized by
the TRC in the GTRP (2010). Some countries have
proposed a process of voluntary resettlement where
the social context will allow it to occur or, alternatively,
more refined zoning to shield breeding female tigers
from human intrusions.
6. The landscape conservation strategy allows tigers to
exist as a collection of ecologically and genetically
linked sub-populations or a metapopulation that con-
fers more robustness and resilience to withstand threats
and stressors generated by people. However, many ti-
ger core breeding populations are for the most part no
Saving wild tigers
296 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
longer embedded in a larger landscape of tiger-friendly
habitat. Instead, they are usually isolated or tenuously
connected to other habitat. Therefore, the new GTRP
strategy emphasizes securing, and restoring where
necessary, the habitat corridors that help to connect
the core breeding populations. The basic premise of
landscape conservation and metapopulation manage-
ment is to increase the ecologically and genetically
functional size of tiger populations. It is recognized
that failure to do so now will result in further isolation
of the core breeding populations contained within and
between TCLs because of the rapid rate at which habitat
is being converted, degraded and fragmented in fast-
developing Asia. Deferring action for another decade,
or even 5 years, is not an option anymore.
The AMCTC recognized that all of the above requires
sustainable financing beyond existing country and inter-
national investments, without which wild tigers will not
be saved (GTRP 2010). Conservation of endangered spe-
cies vulnerable to poaching is an especially costly exer-
cise (Damania et al. 2008). The funds needed above what
the TRCs are already expending total approximately $50
million per year over for the next 5 years. The incremen-
tal funds needed for tiger recovery vary between 40 and
60%, with the exception that India has determined it does
not require additional financing beyond what is now be-
ing allocated (GTRP 2010).
To overcome this resource deficit, the battle to save
tigers requires forming new alliances. Although funds to
specifically manage and conserve tiger landscapes are
few, many donors invest large sums in improving the live-
lihoods of local community through sustainable manage-
ment of forests and natural resources. The foundation of
sustainability of natural resources and forests is healthy
ecosystems. Tigers are a barometer of ecosystem health.
Tigers are the face of biodiversity conservation in general.
TRCs, conservation organizations and global partners can
form alliances and partnerships to leverage and strategi-
cally channel funds invested by these donors for better
landscape management that benefits people and tigers.
CLOSING COMMENTS
All of the best efforts of the past are not working to
save tigers. At best, they have only slowed the rate of their
decline. The GTRP (2010) recognized that recovering wild
tigers requires a multifaceted approach that includes: (i)
changing the conversation about tiger conservation, and
bring many more voices into the discussion on saving wild
tigers; (ii) confronting and overcoming the enormous
asymmetry between the resources fueling economic and
infrastructure development and poaching, on the one hand,
and the limited resources that conservationists can mus-
ter on the other; (iii) boosting our human capacity to ad-
dress the host of problems that must be solved to save
wild tigers; (iv) creating the political influence and social
clout to effect changes in perceptions and policies to make
live wild tigers living in the wild worth more than dead
tigers; and (v) generating sustained financing to support
biodiversity conservation.
Achieving the vision to double tiger numbers in the
next 12 years requires concomitant management interven-
tions at the source sites and in the surrounding landscapes.
The battle to save tigers is at a stage where it has to be
fought at multiple fronts. For tigers to survive in the long
term, tigers and their prey must be protected and man-
aged at a landscape scale that includes protection of source
sites, buffer zones, dispersal corridors and the restoration
of degraded lands, coupled with initiatives through which
the conservation of tigers directly and indirectly meets
the needs of local people. Concurrently, this strategy re-
quires the suppression of the demand that drives tiger
poaching. In addition, it requires a sustained political will
to support these conservation efforts.
As we lose tigers from ecosystems, it means the condi-
tions in those ecosystems are eroding. The ecosystems
themselves lose their resilience to natural and human-
caused change. The ecosystem services that tiger forests
provide to people are compromised. Lacking the tigers
umbrella, other biodiversity will be at great risk and erode
too. We will have failed to leave the legacy of magnifi-
cent wild tigers to our children. Who among us wants to
be remembered for that?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank the anonymous reviewers who provided very
helpful input and comments on the manuscript. I have been
engaged in tiger conservation efforts since 1972 and have
benefited from many discussions with colleagues over
those years. The Smithsonian has provided a platform of
support during this time and I have been constantly en-
couraged to continue this work. Recently, the insights
from the experts and senior officials from TRC have been
invaluable in defining and refining a collective response
to the tiger crisis and linking this to biodiversity conser-
vation generally. My colleagues at the Global Tiger Ini-
tiative Secretariat in the World Bank, and our senior
advisers, have been in constant discussion regarding how
to save tiger from their multiple perspectives. Wild tiger
will be lost if we maintain the status quo. Moving beyond
the status quo requires bold new thinking and actions. I
J. Seidensticker
297 2010 ISZS, Blackwell Publishing and IOZ/CAS
admire their bold thinking and the professional risks my
colleagues take on behalf of wild tigers and biodiversity
conservation. I thank Susan Lumpkin, my partner and col-
league of 30 years, for our daily conversation on saving
wild tiger and for her unwavering support.
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