Tiger numbers have collapsed so dramatically that conservationists are adopting a strategy of securing populations in priority conservation landscapes. This includes improving management effectiveness in these sites. The Conservation Assured|Tiger Standards (CA|TS) are designed to help ensure effectiveness and provide a benchmark against which to measure progress. CA|TS is a distillation of best practice and a roadmap to management effectiveness, linking management to expert-driven standards covering all aspects of management, including those which are tiger-specific (monitoring, maintenance of prey, control of poaching). Sites are audited against a set of standards and if met, are accredited as CA|TS Approved. We describe CA|TS in the context of tiger conservation, describe the evolution and philosophy of the system and consider its application across the tiger range, before drawing on lessons learned from 5 years of development. Important benefits include the independence of CA|TS from existing governmental or NGO institutions, the emphasis on regional governance and the existence of active support groups. Conversely, the participatory approach has slowed implementation. CA|TS remains more attractive to well managed sites than to sites that are struggling, although building capacity in the latter is its key aim. The close connections between people working on tiger conservation make some aspects of independent assessment challenging. Finally, if CA|TS is to succeed in its long term aims, it needs to go hand in hand with secure and adequate funding to increase management capacity in many tiger conservation areas.
Wildlife conservation in the Anthropocene requires bold conservation solutions including restoration of ecosystems and species. The recovery of large carnivore populations is a conservation goal which can generate significant benefits in terms of ecosystem services, ecological functionality, and human well-being. Tigers Panthera tigris, Asia’s most iconic species, are currently restricted to less than 10% of their historic range with recent national extinctions from a number of countries in mainland Southeast Asia. Tiger recovery through range expansion requires suitable habitat, a robust prey base, and high levels of institutional support for conservation. We explored government support for conservation to produce a ranking of the political opportunities for tiger restoration across current and former tiger range countries. We used this analysis, in combination with globally remotely sensed data-sets on human impact, to show that there is potential for significant tiger range expansion. We identified large expanses of currently unoccupied, but potentially suitable, habitat in at least 14 countries including all extant tiger range countries and four countries with extirpated tiger populations – Cambodia, Lao PDR, Viet Nam, and Kazakhstan. Thirty-two percent of expansion areas were within 50-km, and 50% within 100-km, of current tiger populations highlighting that in many landscapes range expansion could be driven by the natural dispersal of tigers provided connectivity is maintained or enhanced. The proportion of potential range within existing protected areas varied between <5% in India, Indonesia, and China, to >60% in Thailand and Cambodia. As such socially appropriate conservation approaches, in collaboration with local communities, will be necessary to support tiger recovery in many areas. We recommend that some of the areas which we have identified should be highlighted as significant for future tiger conservation by tiger range country governments. Whilst the landscapes and sites which we identify will require detailed ground-truthing, and all tiger reintroductions need extensive planning and feasibility assessments, safeguarding these areas for human-carnivore coexistence could provide significant planetary benefits and support both tiger recovery and Global Sustainable Development Goals.
to the communities, as they recognize the added value brought by the Javan gibbon to the commodity they produce.However, since March the coffee supply chain has been disrupted by the uncertain market conditions resulting from the COVID- pandemic, and the closure of a cafe in Singapore that was one of the most important Owa Coffee outlets has resulted in a decline in demand for the coffee. With conservation funds from the export of the coffee no longer available, there have been impacts on community development activities that relied on the project. Typically, communities working with agroforesty have the capacity to survive such situations by relying on the food commodities they produce themselves. However, in this case the cessation of coffee sales has had an impact on the income of the local community. From this experience, the Coffee and Primate Conservation Project has recognized that it is important to consider the choice of agroforest commodities based on their resilience and to reduce dependency on a single commodity. Other forest products will need to be developed that have added conservation value.
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