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Here is their mission statement:
Mission Green
Category:
Organisations - Non-Profit Organisations
Description:
Currently working on a petition to garner support for a tiger habitat at the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, Satteri, North Goa.We know that there have been a lot of causes and appeals floated on the net and perhaps one must have come across this one that didn’t seem any different. But this is serious and here’s the long overdue explanation. There is a dire need to protect our forests, its wildlife and habitat. Tiger numbers are dwindling across the country and Goa is not far behind. The recent episode of a tiger killing in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary region is no longer a secret. It is a known fact that tigers have been spotted regularly in this region and are resident here, recent evidence proving the presence of a tigress and its cub. The Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary is located in the Sattari taluka of North Goa. Spread over 208 sq km, this sanctuary is contiguous with the Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary, Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary, Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary, Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary all in Goa and the Anshi National Park in Karnataka which are part of the Western Ghats which in turn is regarded as one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots. The presence of tigers in this region is an indicator of the health of our forest, the tiger being at the apex of the food chain. It is an asset to us and thus needs to be conserved. The survival of the Tiger in the Wild is crucial to the sustainability of our eco-system and in turn to man’s own survival. Our environmentalists, working in the Mhadei region, and adjacent forests, have been crying themselves hoarse for support from the state government to take steps in the protection and conservation of the tiger and its habitat. Goans all over the state have been voicing their angst too. Due to inaction from all agencies concerned and as a last resort, we the common collective are signing a petition to be sent to the Govt. of India. The said petition is available with the following eco groups/ persons:Nirmal Kulkarni / Earthworm/ PorvorimAjay Dongre /MITRA / PondaTallulah D’Silva, Arati Das/ Mission Green/ PanajiWe also have an online version at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mhadeitigerhabitat/2nd October – 8th October is celebrated as the National Wildlife Week, no better time than this to vouch our support for the same. You can do this by simply signing on either and ensure that you’ve taken the first step towards the protection of our forests, the Tiger and its habitat. It’s a simple, peaceful and positive step for a greater common good. For our children and for the survival of mankind.
Contact Details
Email:
Office:
Panaji, Goa
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Saturday, 15 March 2008
George Schaller
http://discovermagazine.com/ 2008/mar/ 21-george- schaller. s-grand-plan- to-save-the- marco-polo- sheep/article_ view?b_start: int=0&-C=
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MARCH 2008
George Schaller's Grand Plan to Save the Marco Polo Sheep
"Obviously humans are evolution's greatest mistake," says George Schaller.
by Marion Long, Photography by Doron Gild
"In wildness is the preservation of the world," wrote the 19th-century American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The quotation is a favorite of George Schaller, considered the finest field biologist of our time and the most powerful voice for conservation in more than 100 years. Indeed, Schaller has described himself as "a 19th-century wanderer with a scientific bent…on an intangible and elusive search."
Schaller, who was born in Berlin in 1933 and came to the United States with his mother and brother in 1947, has loved animals and the outdoors for as long as he can remember. He was in graduate school in the mid-1950s when one of his professors asked him, half jokingly, "How would you like to study gorillas?" The 26-year-old was happy to settle deep in the forests of central Africa. There, he wrote rhapsodically and painstakingly about gorillas in the wild, changing public perception of the animal forever. He went on to study tigers in India, jaguars in Brazil, snow leopards in Pakistan, and lions in the Serengeti. His account of the latter, The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations, won a National Book Award in 1973.
In time Schaller came to view his early work as "a careless rapture" compared with another, more pressing concern: saving species from extinction caused by man's aggression. Schaller calls the work of conservation "a gigantic, continuous headache," explaining that "instead of just being a biologist—something for which I was trained—I must also be a fund-raiser, diplomat, politician, sociologist, anthropologist, everything at once."
His results as a conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation Society have been spectacular nevertheless. In 1980 he began working with the Chinese government to save the giant panda from extinction, and since then he has helped establish more than 20 wildlife parks and reserves around the world. Today, at 74, he is pursuing his most ambitious goal yet: building the Pamir International Peace Park at the junction of four countries—Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and Tajikistan—in the process saving the spectacular spiral-horned Marco Polo sheep. In his latest book, A Naturalist and Other Beasts (Sierra Club), Schaller ponders his career of more than 50 years, although the mood is hardly retrospective. "I am not in search of memories," Schaller writes at the outset. "My interests lie in the future."
Do you have an earliest memory of feeling deeply connected to nature and wildlife?
I can't remember being interested in anything else. You start as a child: You like to ramble around and watch birds, turn over rocks, pick up snakes. I had a little zoo of salamanders and opossums and other creatures. Basically, I'm still doing what I did as a kid.
When did you first recognize the danger that people pose to the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants?
One of my first projects—I was 26—was studying mountain gorillas in central Africa. Humans were overrunning their habitat, and I realized the gorillas wouldn't have a future unless we saved that habitat.
Your field studies of beautiful animals won you recognition, yet your focus shifted to conservation biology. Why?
When I began my work, most of the big animals had never been studied, so when I sat with the gorillas, almost anything I observed was new and gave people an idea of what their lives were really like. But how can you watch the few hundred gorillas left in the world and not feel guilty about their precarious existence?
How do you choose a particular place for your next round of conservation efforts?
In recent years, I've looked at places where nobody's doing anything and try to see what I can do. For example, there are lots of nongovernmental organizations sitting in Nairobi, worrying about wildlife. But who goes to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran? There, I think I can have an impact.
What do you do to gain the trust of the local government in countries where Americans are often viewed with suspicion?
They don't trust you until they know that you have no other agenda. I go in there, I'm focused on wildlife, and that's it.
How do you begin effective conservation in these countries?
I go in and get facts about the wildlife, the people, the condition of the habitat. You give the officials the information you've gathered; you give them suggestions and see what their response is. It's extremely important to have one local person—a chief or some local leader—who really cares and can do something about it.
Given all the strife in places like Iran and Afghanistan, how do you get people to pay attention to protecting wildlife?
We choose animals valued by the locals. For example, in 2001 I started a project in Iran. I went there and asked how I could be of assistance. They told me, "The last Asiatic cheetahs are here; only 50 or 60 may be left." Now we have a cheetah project there, and some of the animals are wearing radio collars, and Iran is very supportive in that work. If you choose a conspicuous animal like a cheetah, which Iran considers one of its natural treasures, not only does the government pay attention, but suddenly everybody's aware.
When you are near a mountain gorilla, you recognize it as kin. You feel as though you might put your arm around it and have a chat.
Why do people respond so strongly to certain animals?
I suspect it's because they're charismatic, they're beautiful, and you can see them easily. If the panda were all black, like a black bear, nobody would pay much attention to it. People feel they are helping to save one special animal to which they feel an emotional attachment, not realizing perhaps that the only way to do that is to preserve its whole life system, its territory, its food sources, and so on. When the giant panda became famous, the attention also benefited thousands of other plant and animal species that inhabited the same mountain forests.
Has any animal gained a special hold on your affections?
When you are near a mountain gorilla, you recognize it as kin. You feel as though you might put your arm around it and have a chat. When I first saw a gorilla, I felt a desire to communicate with him, to let him know that I intended him no harm and only wanted to be near him. And I wondered if he shared this feeling of kinship with me. Never before had I had that feeling meeting an animal. You don't get that feeling when you see a tiger, but your mind almost glows with the sight—they're absolutely gorgeous—and to see a tiger is one of the great wildlife experiences. I can also get enamored of capybaras, which are giant rodents and look like big guinea pigs, and even wild pigs. I have had two kinds of pig, a warthog and a white-lipped peccary, as pets. They are just as intelligent and social as dogs. I have an attachment to all the animals I've studied and keep involved in what's happening with them. Emotionally, they cannot leave me.
You've written that some of your happiest experiences in the wild have come when you felt accepted by another animal.
Because we've hunted big animals for so many thousands of years, every single one of them is shy. You'd be able to interact with them close-up if only man's behavior had been different. During this last trip in northern Tibet, a wolf wandered into camp and looked around—he'd probably never seen people before. And that's the way it would be, a sort of Garden of Eden. I used to watch gorillas by climbing low branches of a tree so I could look down on them and they could keep an eye on me. One time a female gorilla climbed up and sat next to me and just looked at me. I remember once in the Serengeti, I was following a cheetah on foot, and she got nervous and moved away from me. Then she went and killed a gazelle fawn, and I lay down near her and moved slowly closer until we were about 10 feet apart, and she simply looked over her shoulder and ignored me because she sensed I wasn't going to harm her.
A lot of the conservation news seems very grim these days. How do you keep going in moments of discouragement?
I don't get up each morning and say, "I've got to save the world, starting with the United States government." I have very specific projects, where I can see progress. And that keeps you going because, in a small way, I see that I can have an influence. And especially if you teach others, and have students and assistants to work with, and can find a way they can continue the work—that's satisfying.
You have said that recent decades have seen a revolution in our relationship with animals as humans overcome cross-species barriers, achieving intimacy with humpback whales, chimpanzees, lions, mountain sheep, wolves, and many others. If the problem for wildlife is no longer ignorance of their plight, what is the major obstacle now?
People may be aware, but it's still peripheral to their minds. If you ask people here, "Should we save the tigers in India?" 95 percent would say yes. But if you ask them, "Should we have mountain lions here in the neighborhood? There's some chance they might eat your dogs," then the answer is, "Oh no, no, no, we don't want them." So people are not willing to sacrifice anything. But that can be changed with proper education. In the end it's the community that will save the environment. Whether you're talking about an African village or Tibetan nomads, basic human attitudes are not that different. People simply have to be stimulated. In countries like China, you can't own the land, but the Buddhist monasteries are setting up sanctuaries that, in effect, become little reserves. I've been to two festivals in a Tibetan province where nomads have come together of their own accord to celebrate and protect wildlife. They'll say: "Oh, our wild yak are
disappearing. We're not going to allow grazing on this mountain range. These flats are for Tibetan antelope." So every community can do this if something stimulates them.
What about steps we can take right here in the United States?
We have an overabundance of everything. I've got two cars sitting in the garage. People must understand that everything they do is an ecological act. How much does it cost to bring grapes here from Chile (pdf)? Not just the grapes, but the fuel spent in carbon emission? If you have a cup of coffee, that means some rain forest in Colombia is being cut down to make coffee plantations. Do you have a cell phone? OK, inside it there's a mineral called coltan, mined mostly in the eastern Congo by a lot of the Rwandans who fled after the genocide, and they're living in the forest, and they're killing gorillas and elephants for meat because they don't have much else to eat. I've got two lights on in here. [Gets up and turns off a light.] I don't need two lights on in here! You know, this is endless.
You're currently involved in the creation of a peace park, a wildlife reserve where Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and Tajikistan meet. How does that work?
Well, you have the Pamirs, which are broad valleys flanked by mountains extending southward from Russia to Pakistan's borders. You've got Kirghiz nomads, who are very colorful, you've got Marco Polo sheep, you've got snow leopards. The main problem is that you've also got four countries, each with its own political system, its own language, its own history of strife. We managed to get officials from all four countries together in September 2006 in China, and they agreed to work together. But you can't necessarily get definite boundaries and say, "This is a peace park right now." I don't care what it ends up being designated, as long as wildlife is protected. We use the Marco Polo sheep as a symbol because it's a spectacular animal, all countries relate to it, and it's economically valuable. An American hunter will pay $20,000 to $25,000 to shoot one in Tajikistan or China. So the first question is, where does that money go? At least three-quarters of it
ought to go to the local communities so they will see the value of protecting the sheep.
Will poor regions always be disadvantaged in protecting what is theirs?
If a poor country spends most of its money on arms, it doesn't have money for anything else. And it's obvious that the developed countries with quite a bit of money don't spend it on the environment. Right now, when the World Bank makes a large loan to a country, that country must repay it. But how? They ship their food overseas, and the local people don't have that food anymore. Even when grants are provided, the figures can be misleading. You have the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union all giving environmental grants. Yet probably two-thirds of that money goes to foreign consultants. Then the countries have to buy American or European equipment as part of the project. Only a small amount actually goes to help the local people. Until developed countries genuinely care about the rest of the world, things are going to be very difficult.
Is that why you have said that wildlife conservation may ultimately depend on spiritual values?
Can you put a value on a river? On the cry of an animal? Unless you can convince people of the spiritual value of the environment, the cause is lost. Take the Tibetans, who recently began trimming their cloaks with tiger and leopard skins from India because of their new wealth. The Dalai Lama got up and said, "This is against your religion," and the Tibetans stopped wearing skins. So among the Tibetans at least, there's a strong spiritual responsiveness to the environment.
.
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MARCH 2008
George Schaller's Grand Plan to Save the Marco Polo Sheep
"Obviously humans are evolution's greatest mistake," says George Schaller.
by Marion Long, Photography by Doron Gild
"In wildness is the preservation of the world," wrote the 19th-century American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The quotation is a favorite of George Schaller, considered the finest field biologist of our time and the most powerful voice for conservation in more than 100 years. Indeed, Schaller has described himself as "a 19th-century wanderer with a scientific bent…on an intangible and elusive search."
Schaller, who was born in Berlin in 1933 and came to the United States with his mother and brother in 1947, has loved animals and the outdoors for as long as he can remember. He was in graduate school in the mid-1950s when one of his professors asked him, half jokingly, "How would you like to study gorillas?" The 26-year-old was happy to settle deep in the forests of central Africa. There, he wrote rhapsodically and painstakingly about gorillas in the wild, changing public perception of the animal forever. He went on to study tigers in India, jaguars in Brazil, snow leopards in Pakistan, and lions in the Serengeti. His account of the latter, The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations, won a National Book Award in 1973.
In time Schaller came to view his early work as "a careless rapture" compared with another, more pressing concern: saving species from extinction caused by man's aggression. Schaller calls the work of conservation "a gigantic, continuous headache," explaining that "instead of just being a biologist—something for which I was trained—I must also be a fund-raiser, diplomat, politician, sociologist, anthropologist, everything at once."
His results as a conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation Society have been spectacular nevertheless. In 1980 he began working with the Chinese government to save the giant panda from extinction, and since then he has helped establish more than 20 wildlife parks and reserves around the world. Today, at 74, he is pursuing his most ambitious goal yet: building the Pamir International Peace Park at the junction of four countries—Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and Tajikistan—in the process saving the spectacular spiral-horned Marco Polo sheep. In his latest book, A Naturalist and Other Beasts (Sierra Club), Schaller ponders his career of more than 50 years, although the mood is hardly retrospective. "I am not in search of memories," Schaller writes at the outset. "My interests lie in the future."
Do you have an earliest memory of feeling deeply connected to nature and wildlife?
I can't remember being interested in anything else. You start as a child: You like to ramble around and watch birds, turn over rocks, pick up snakes. I had a little zoo of salamanders and opossums and other creatures. Basically, I'm still doing what I did as a kid.
When did you first recognize the danger that people pose to the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants?
One of my first projects—I was 26—was studying mountain gorillas in central Africa. Humans were overrunning their habitat, and I realized the gorillas wouldn't have a future unless we saved that habitat.
Your field studies of beautiful animals won you recognition, yet your focus shifted to conservation biology. Why?
When I began my work, most of the big animals had never been studied, so when I sat with the gorillas, almost anything I observed was new and gave people an idea of what their lives were really like. But how can you watch the few hundred gorillas left in the world and not feel guilty about their precarious existence?
How do you choose a particular place for your next round of conservation efforts?
In recent years, I've looked at places where nobody's doing anything and try to see what I can do. For example, there are lots of nongovernmental organizations sitting in Nairobi, worrying about wildlife. But who goes to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran? There, I think I can have an impact.
What do you do to gain the trust of the local government in countries where Americans are often viewed with suspicion?
They don't trust you until they know that you have no other agenda. I go in there, I'm focused on wildlife, and that's it.
How do you begin effective conservation in these countries?
I go in and get facts about the wildlife, the people, the condition of the habitat. You give the officials the information you've gathered; you give them suggestions and see what their response is. It's extremely important to have one local person—a chief or some local leader—who really cares and can do something about it.
Given all the strife in places like Iran and Afghanistan, how do you get people to pay attention to protecting wildlife?
We choose animals valued by the locals. For example, in 2001 I started a project in Iran. I went there and asked how I could be of assistance. They told me, "The last Asiatic cheetahs are here; only 50 or 60 may be left." Now we have a cheetah project there, and some of the animals are wearing radio collars, and Iran is very supportive in that work. If you choose a conspicuous animal like a cheetah, which Iran considers one of its natural treasures, not only does the government pay attention, but suddenly everybody's aware.
When you are near a mountain gorilla, you recognize it as kin. You feel as though you might put your arm around it and have a chat.
Why do people respond so strongly to certain animals?
I suspect it's because they're charismatic, they're beautiful, and you can see them easily. If the panda were all black, like a black bear, nobody would pay much attention to it. People feel they are helping to save one special animal to which they feel an emotional attachment, not realizing perhaps that the only way to do that is to preserve its whole life system, its territory, its food sources, and so on. When the giant panda became famous, the attention also benefited thousands of other plant and animal species that inhabited the same mountain forests.
Has any animal gained a special hold on your affections?
When you are near a mountain gorilla, you recognize it as kin. You feel as though you might put your arm around it and have a chat. When I first saw a gorilla, I felt a desire to communicate with him, to let him know that I intended him no harm and only wanted to be near him. And I wondered if he shared this feeling of kinship with me. Never before had I had that feeling meeting an animal. You don't get that feeling when you see a tiger, but your mind almost glows with the sight—they're absolutely gorgeous—and to see a tiger is one of the great wildlife experiences. I can also get enamored of capybaras, which are giant rodents and look like big guinea pigs, and even wild pigs. I have had two kinds of pig, a warthog and a white-lipped peccary, as pets. They are just as intelligent and social as dogs. I have an attachment to all the animals I've studied and keep involved in what's happening with them. Emotionally, they cannot leave me.
You've written that some of your happiest experiences in the wild have come when you felt accepted by another animal.
Because we've hunted big animals for so many thousands of years, every single one of them is shy. You'd be able to interact with them close-up if only man's behavior had been different. During this last trip in northern Tibet, a wolf wandered into camp and looked around—he'd probably never seen people before. And that's the way it would be, a sort of Garden of Eden. I used to watch gorillas by climbing low branches of a tree so I could look down on them and they could keep an eye on me. One time a female gorilla climbed up and sat next to me and just looked at me. I remember once in the Serengeti, I was following a cheetah on foot, and she got nervous and moved away from me. Then she went and killed a gazelle fawn, and I lay down near her and moved slowly closer until we were about 10 feet apart, and she simply looked over her shoulder and ignored me because she sensed I wasn't going to harm her.
A lot of the conservation news seems very grim these days. How do you keep going in moments of discouragement?
I don't get up each morning and say, "I've got to save the world, starting with the United States government." I have very specific projects, where I can see progress. And that keeps you going because, in a small way, I see that I can have an influence. And especially if you teach others, and have students and assistants to work with, and can find a way they can continue the work—that's satisfying.
You have said that recent decades have seen a revolution in our relationship with animals as humans overcome cross-species barriers, achieving intimacy with humpback whales, chimpanzees, lions, mountain sheep, wolves, and many others. If the problem for wildlife is no longer ignorance of their plight, what is the major obstacle now?
People may be aware, but it's still peripheral to their minds. If you ask people here, "Should we save the tigers in India?" 95 percent would say yes. But if you ask them, "Should we have mountain lions here in the neighborhood? There's some chance they might eat your dogs," then the answer is, "Oh no, no, no, we don't want them." So people are not willing to sacrifice anything. But that can be changed with proper education. In the end it's the community that will save the environment. Whether you're talking about an African village or Tibetan nomads, basic human attitudes are not that different. People simply have to be stimulated. In countries like China, you can't own the land, but the Buddhist monasteries are setting up sanctuaries that, in effect, become little reserves. I've been to two festivals in a Tibetan province where nomads have come together of their own accord to celebrate and protect wildlife. They'll say: "Oh, our wild yak are
disappearing. We're not going to allow grazing on this mountain range. These flats are for Tibetan antelope." So every community can do this if something stimulates them.
What about steps we can take right here in the United States?
We have an overabundance of everything. I've got two cars sitting in the garage. People must understand that everything they do is an ecological act. How much does it cost to bring grapes here from Chile (pdf)? Not just the grapes, but the fuel spent in carbon emission? If you have a cup of coffee, that means some rain forest in Colombia is being cut down to make coffee plantations. Do you have a cell phone? OK, inside it there's a mineral called coltan, mined mostly in the eastern Congo by a lot of the Rwandans who fled after the genocide, and they're living in the forest, and they're killing gorillas and elephants for meat because they don't have much else to eat. I've got two lights on in here. [Gets up and turns off a light.] I don't need two lights on in here! You know, this is endless.
You're currently involved in the creation of a peace park, a wildlife reserve where Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and Tajikistan meet. How does that work?
Well, you have the Pamirs, which are broad valleys flanked by mountains extending southward from Russia to Pakistan's borders. You've got Kirghiz nomads, who are very colorful, you've got Marco Polo sheep, you've got snow leopards. The main problem is that you've also got four countries, each with its own political system, its own language, its own history of strife. We managed to get officials from all four countries together in September 2006 in China, and they agreed to work together. But you can't necessarily get definite boundaries and say, "This is a peace park right now." I don't care what it ends up being designated, as long as wildlife is protected. We use the Marco Polo sheep as a symbol because it's a spectacular animal, all countries relate to it, and it's economically valuable. An American hunter will pay $20,000 to $25,000 to shoot one in Tajikistan or China. So the first question is, where does that money go? At least three-quarters of it
ought to go to the local communities so they will see the value of protecting the sheep.
Will poor regions always be disadvantaged in protecting what is theirs?
If a poor country spends most of its money on arms, it doesn't have money for anything else. And it's obvious that the developed countries with quite a bit of money don't spend it on the environment. Right now, when the World Bank makes a large loan to a country, that country must repay it. But how? They ship their food overseas, and the local people don't have that food anymore. Even when grants are provided, the figures can be misleading. You have the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union all giving environmental grants. Yet probably two-thirds of that money goes to foreign consultants. Then the countries have to buy American or European equipment as part of the project. Only a small amount actually goes to help the local people. Until developed countries genuinely care about the rest of the world, things are going to be very difficult.
Is that why you have said that wildlife conservation may ultimately depend on spiritual values?
Can you put a value on a river? On the cry of an animal? Unless you can convince people of the spiritual value of the environment, the cause is lost. Take the Tibetans, who recently began trimming their cloaks with tiger and leopard skins from India because of their new wealth. The Dalai Lama got up and said, "This is against your religion," and the Tibetans stopped wearing skins. So among the Tibetans at least, there's a strong spiritual responsiveness to the environment.
.
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
Friday, 22 February 2008
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Tiger caught & hastily released in Sunderbans
It is one of the deadliest creatures on the planet, capable of crunching through limbs with a single bite of its vice-like jaw, but look closely at the face of this majestic – and pregnant – royal Bengal tiger and it appears to be displaying not a deadly gnashing of its glistening teeth, but a triumphant smile.
Read more...
Read more...
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
1411 : The countdown begins
Thanks to Prashant for the link to this story.
Only 1,411 tigers remain in the wild in India. That is the stark finding of the National Tiger Conservation Authority's estimation report which was released on Tuesday. The report confirms the worst fears of experts and conservationists—that the national animal is living on the edge, not all that far from a perilous slide to extinction.
Read more here.
Only 1,411 tigers remain in the wild in India. That is the stark finding of the National Tiger Conservation Authority's estimation report which was released on Tuesday. The report confirms the worst fears of experts and conservationists—that the national animal is living on the edge, not all that far from a perilous slide to extinction.
Read more here.
Friday, 23 November 2007
The face of a doomed species
Tigers driven to edge of extinction by poachers and loss of habitat
By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi
Published: 31 October 2007
The disastrous impact of poaching and the destruction of the natural habitat of one of the planet's most threatened animals will be made clear tomorrow when the Indian government is told that its remaining tiger population could be as low as 1,300.
The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, will be told that drastic action has to be taken against the two forces threatening the big cat's chance of survival.
"That size of a population is scientifically not viable," said Valmik Thapar, a tiger expert and member of the National Board of Wildlife, which is due to convene in Delhi for a meeting chaired by Mr Singh. "But in the real world you have to try as hard as you can."
Along with the polar bear, the tiger symbolises perhaps more than any other large creature the majesty and power of the natural world. At the same time the tawdry story of the tiger's decline – not just in India but in other countries where it clings on desperately – is a stark indictment of mankind's apparent inability to preserve the natural habitats on which it depends.
No one knows precisely how many tigers are left in India, home to perhaps 80 per cent of the world's remaining animals and which, at the turn of the 20th century, was estimated to have up to 100,000 animals. It is believed there were about 5,000 at the start of the decade.
The most recent census, conducted in 2001 and 2002, put the figure at 3,642. But many experts questioned the way in which that count was handled and a new census was carried out by the government-run Wildlife Institute of India using a more scientifically robust method. While the findings will not be formally announced until the end of the year, preliminary results of the new count have put the population at between 1,300 and 1,500.
"The new figures and facts came as no surprise to conservationists, although the government is still recovering from the shock," said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, which has several tiger programmes. "In Madhya Pradesh – which is known as the Tiger State – the study has shown a loss of 61 per cent on the figures of the previous tiger census. The state of Maharashtra has shown a loss of 57 per cent."
She added: "In the past census... many tigers were found outside the tiger reserves. The new study shows virtually no tigers outside the tiger reserves."
Experts say the reasons for the decline of the tiger are simple. Not enough is being done to halt the continued poaching of the animals, which are highly prized in China and other parts of east Asia for their pelts and body parts. A tiger skin can fetch up to £5,300 while tiger penises – traditionally believed to have near-magical properties – can fetch £14,000 per kilo.
The tiger has suffered from a loss of its habitat as a result of large-scale mining and hydro-power dam projects. The loss of habitat and prey encourages tigers, pure carnivores, to seize domestic livestock which in turn aggravates local farmers. The tiger is the national symbol but, in the past five years, poachers have been killing them at the rate of one a day, campaigners believe.
Debbie Banks of the Environmental Investigations Agency, a London-based campaign group, said development projects often resulted in the displacement of communities who are left with a choice of moving to the slums of large cities or into the forests. "Living in the forests brings them into conflict with wildlife and the under-resourced, under-trained, ill-equipped forest department staff," she said.
Mr Thapar, 55, who has written 15 books about tigers during three decades working with the animals, has said it would now "take a miracle" to save them. He warned of the impact of the Recognition of Forest Rights Act, a piece of legislation passed last year and expected to become law in the coming months, which grants some of India's most impoverished communities the right to own and live in the forests.
The problem, he said, was that all evidence showed humans and tigers could not co-exist. "If you are not going to set aside habitats where there are no humans then you cannot have tigers," he said.
The decline of the tiger is not isolated to India. In the past century, tiger populations across the world have slumped by 95 per cent and, across a broad chunk of Asia, tigers are now confronting extinction. Indeed, of the nine known sub-species of tiger, three (the Caspian, Javanese and Balinese) are already extinct while another, the South China tiger, is nearing extinction in the wild with perhaps fewer than 30 surviving.
An estimated 4,000 of the South China sub-species – the only one native to central and southern China –roamed the country 50 years ago but its habitat has been dramatically reduced by the country's rapid economic growth and the sub-species was declared officially extinct in 2003. Just this week, the Chinese authorities banned hunting in a mountainous area of Shaanxi province of north-west China where a young South China tiger was apparently sighted by a farmer. The sighting has generated much excitement among conservationists and a team of experts has been set up to conduct a search.
Ms Wright said that, in India, there may now only be two genetically viable populations of Bengal tiger, as the country's sub-species is known. Those live in the Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttaranchal and the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, which is said to haveinspired Rudyard Kipling to write The Jungle Book.
There have been the occasional pieces of good news. Last month about 20 tigers were discovered in a mountainous forest range in the western state of Maharashtra from where they were thought to have long disappeared. But among such rare flashes of hope, experts say the evidence of the tiger's ongoing decline have been all too clear. In February 2005, it was revealed all the tigers in the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan had been killed by poachers. Meanwhile, the size of the continuing trade in illegal tiger parts has been revealed by activists working undercover in places such as Tibet where there is flourishing business.
A senior official in India's Environment Ministry said tomorrow's meeting would evaluate progress at implementing recommendations made at the last meeting 18 months ago.
"Everyone is waiting for the [official] tiger report – even the Prime Minister," the official told the Asian Age newspaper.
"It is only after the report is tabled that we will get the real picture, which we know is not going to be rosy. We know that we have lost large numbers of our big cats."
http://environment.independent.co.uk/nature/article3112841.ece
Tigers driven to edge of extinction by poachers and loss of habitat
By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi
Published: 31 October 2007
The disastrous impact of poaching and the destruction of the natural habitat of one of the planet's most threatened animals will be made clear tomorrow when the Indian government is told that its remaining tiger population could be as low as 1,300.
The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, will be told that drastic action has to be taken against the two forces threatening the big cat's chance of survival.
"That size of a population is scientifically not viable," said Valmik Thapar, a tiger expert and member of the National Board of Wildlife, which is due to convene in Delhi for a meeting chaired by Mr Singh. "But in the real world you have to try as hard as you can."
Along with the polar bear, the tiger symbolises perhaps more than any other large creature the majesty and power of the natural world. At the same time the tawdry story of the tiger's decline – not just in India but in other countries where it clings on desperately – is a stark indictment of mankind's apparent inability to preserve the natural habitats on which it depends.
No one knows precisely how many tigers are left in India, home to perhaps 80 per cent of the world's remaining animals and which, at the turn of the 20th century, was estimated to have up to 100,000 animals. It is believed there were about 5,000 at the start of the decade.
The most recent census, conducted in 2001 and 2002, put the figure at 3,642. But many experts questioned the way in which that count was handled and a new census was carried out by the government-run Wildlife Institute of India using a more scientifically robust method. While the findings will not be formally announced until the end of the year, preliminary results of the new count have put the population at between 1,300 and 1,500.
"The new figures and facts came as no surprise to conservationists, although the government is still recovering from the shock," said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, which has several tiger programmes. "In Madhya Pradesh – which is known as the Tiger State – the study has shown a loss of 61 per cent on the figures of the previous tiger census. The state of Maharashtra has shown a loss of 57 per cent."
She added: "In the past census... many tigers were found outside the tiger reserves. The new study shows virtually no tigers outside the tiger reserves."
Experts say the reasons for the decline of the tiger are simple. Not enough is being done to halt the continued poaching of the animals, which are highly prized in China and other parts of east Asia for their pelts and body parts. A tiger skin can fetch up to £5,300 while tiger penises – traditionally believed to have near-magical properties – can fetch £14,000 per kilo.
The tiger has suffered from a loss of its habitat as a result of large-scale mining and hydro-power dam projects. The loss of habitat and prey encourages tigers, pure carnivores, to seize domestic livestock which in turn aggravates local farmers. The tiger is the national symbol but, in the past five years, poachers have been killing them at the rate of one a day, campaigners believe.
Debbie Banks of the Environmental Investigations Agency, a London-based campaign group, said development projects often resulted in the displacement of communities who are left with a choice of moving to the slums of large cities or into the forests. "Living in the forests brings them into conflict with wildlife and the under-resourced, under-trained, ill-equipped forest department staff," she said.
Mr Thapar, 55, who has written 15 books about tigers during three decades working with the animals, has said it would now "take a miracle" to save them. He warned of the impact of the Recognition of Forest Rights Act, a piece of legislation passed last year and expected to become law in the coming months, which grants some of India's most impoverished communities the right to own and live in the forests.
The problem, he said, was that all evidence showed humans and tigers could not co-exist. "If you are not going to set aside habitats where there are no humans then you cannot have tigers," he said.
The decline of the tiger is not isolated to India. In the past century, tiger populations across the world have slumped by 95 per cent and, across a broad chunk of Asia, tigers are now confronting extinction. Indeed, of the nine known sub-species of tiger, three (the Caspian, Javanese and Balinese) are already extinct while another, the South China tiger, is nearing extinction in the wild with perhaps fewer than 30 surviving.
An estimated 4,000 of the South China sub-species – the only one native to central and southern China –roamed the country 50 years ago but its habitat has been dramatically reduced by the country's rapid economic growth and the sub-species was declared officially extinct in 2003. Just this week, the Chinese authorities banned hunting in a mountainous area of Shaanxi province of north-west China where a young South China tiger was apparently sighted by a farmer. The sighting has generated much excitement among conservationists and a team of experts has been set up to conduct a search.
Ms Wright said that, in India, there may now only be two genetically viable populations of Bengal tiger, as the country's sub-species is known. Those live in the Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttaranchal and the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, which is said to haveinspired Rudyard Kipling to write The Jungle Book.
There have been the occasional pieces of good news. Last month about 20 tigers were discovered in a mountainous forest range in the western state of Maharashtra from where they were thought to have long disappeared. But among such rare flashes of hope, experts say the evidence of the tiger's ongoing decline have been all too clear. In February 2005, it was revealed all the tigers in the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan had been killed by poachers. Meanwhile, the size of the continuing trade in illegal tiger parts has been revealed by activists working undercover in places such as Tibet where there is flourishing business.
A senior official in India's Environment Ministry said tomorrow's meeting would evaluate progress at implementing recommendations made at the last meeting 18 months ago.
"Everyone is waiting for the [official] tiger report – even the Prime Minister," the official told the Asian Age newspaper.
"It is only after the report is tabled that we will get the real picture, which we know is not going to be rosy. We know that we have lost large numbers of our big cats."
http://environment.independent.co.uk/nature/article3112841.ece
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