Saving the Tiger: More Money or Less Power?

Abstract

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) at the Bronx Zoo, New York, has recently released a policy analysis entitled Saving the Tiger: a Conservation Strategy (Norchi & Bolze 1995). The conservation community needs be aware of this report because of the influence WCS and similar international agencies have on wildlife policy formulation throughout the world. (For example, WCS recently co-sponsored two biodiversity conferences attended by officials from China, India, Lao P. D. R., Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam discuss issues of biodiversity, including tiger conservation.) The elegantly produced report does two things: provides an analysis of the current threats tiger conservation worldwide and offers policy recommendations for more effective conservation of the big cat. Trade in tiger parts and continuing human pressures on tiger habitat are seen as the primary factors responsible for declining tiger numbers. Key recommendations of the report include improved law enforcement, the eviction of humans from tiger habitat, and conservation education of consumers of tiger products and local communities living near tiger habitat. At the heart of the WCS report lies the suggestion that there is insufficient political commitment tiger conservation. The report cites Nepal's staggering annual expenditure of $5800 per square kilometer to protect and better manage Royal Chitwan National Park (p. 10) as an example of the kind of political commitment required for effective conservation in other parts of the tiger's range. Such expenditure is necessary conduct campaigns in consumer countries about the impact of the use of tiger products on tiger populations, a conservation focus that is essential, and one that I will not address further in this note. According the WCS report, money is also required educate local communities about the importance of tiger conservation; translocate human populations from within tiger reserves areas of less conservation importance; build walls and other deterrents keep local people and their cattle out of ti-