Chapter 12 - The Cat Specialist Group and Tigers

Abstract

The mission of the Cat Specialist Group (CatSG) is to support and advance the conservation of all free-living cat species. The CatSG is one of over 100 such groups of the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Today, CatSG members are engaged in major conservation projects throughout the world and share their knowledge and expertise on the world's 37 species of wild cats at scientific conferences and workshops. One of their most important duties is to determine the conservation status of wild cat populations worldwide and to compile this information for the IUCN List of Threatened Species. Members support the development and implementation of conservation strategies and action plans as instruments for the conservation of cat species and populations. The plight of the tiger has been a dominating conservation issue for many CatSG members. A major challenge facing CatSG members is that for many species conservation assessments suffer from a lack of reliable information. Even for the most charismatic and best-known species like tigers, changes occur very fast, or are hard to notice because the survey system is too slow to discover them in time. This is a task too big for the CatSG alone—it needs to cooperate with the international conservation community and the relevant institutions in the range countries.