Tiger experts in India sounded an alarm over poaching of tigers on Global Tiger Day on Tuesday saying that on an average, two wild cats are killed per week due to high demand of their body parts in Asian countries.
They also said wild tigers were facing the risk of extinction in some countries due to a lack of accurate information on their population.
“Poaching is the greatest threat to wild tigers today. Along with ivory and rhino horn, tiger parts are in high demand throughout Asia,” said experts on the occasion, organised by World Wildlife Fund.
As per statistics from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, a minimum of 1,590 tigers were poached between January 2000 and April 2014. “This comes to an average of two per week. However, actual poaching levels are likely to be substantially higher, felt the experts.
At the 2010 St. Petersburg ‘Tiger Summit’ when tiger range countries committed
to the goal Tx2 or doubling the number of wild tigers by 2022, the global wild tiger population was believed to be as few as 3,200. “This figure was just an estimate,” said Michael Baltzer, leader of WWF Tigers Alive Initiative’
In 2010, many countries had not undertaken systematic national tiger surveys. However, many have done or are currently doing so. However, not all have still done leaving major cause for worry with incomplete data base. It is essential to know how many tigers actually exist and where, only then they can be best protected, he said.
It is feared that many countries as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam are not carrying out national tiger surveys. Hence they could lose their tigers to poachers without even realising, said the experts. The experts have called upon these countries to carry out surveys urgently.
Systematic national surveys take 6-12 months to plan and a minimum of a year to complete, so these surveys must start now if an updated global tiger figure is to be released by the halfway point to Tx2 in 2016, said Baltzer.
Currently, the population of tigers in the wild is known for India, Nepal and Russia which carry out regular national surveys. Numbers will soon be known for Bhutan, Bangladesh and China which are in the process of carrying out surveys.
During surveys, individual tigers are identified using their stripes which are as unique as human fingerprints.
The surveys not only indicate tiger populations but also their locations and trends. Surveys are also important in bringing out the figures of tigers living outside protected areas or moving between protected areas through previously unknown and unprotected corridors. Such information enables respective Governments to effectively plan their anti-poaching efforts, the experts pointed out.