EcoWorldly

Expansion of critical habitat for tigers and the establishment of a Wildlife Crime Control Committee are among the announcements from the Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop. But will these efforts be enough to protect tigers from China’s ‘bizarre obsession’ with tiger body parts?

Encouraging news so far from the inaugural session of the Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal announced a 900 sq km increase of Bardia National Park, expanding critical habitat for Nepal’s tigers.

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The Prime Minister added that a National Tiger Conservation Authority and Wildlife Control Committee would be established by the government, according to a WWF release.

The solutions will be area specific, but the future of conservation will depend upon how we act now and how we make tiger conservation and overall biodiversity much more valuable to the livelihoods of local communities.

Anil Manandar, Country Representative of WWF Nepal, is optimistic about the government’s plans.

This is indeed a great conservation initiative, which will certainly help in curbing illegal wildlife trade and poaching in Nepal. We are confident that by embracing innovative conservation strategies Nepal will succeed in doubling its number of endangered tigers.

The inaugural event is hosted by the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation and the Government of Nepal. Key partners include the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Secretariat, Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative, Save the Tiger Fund, World Bank, National Trust for Nature Conservation and WWF-Nepal.

Over 200 participants, including scientists, policy-makers, conservationists, and representatives from partner organizations, are attending the four-day tiger conservation workshop.

“Killer” tigers

However, not everyone in Nepal supports the conservation of tigers. Villagers living near tiger habitat have complained that the government has not taken steps to “kill or capture the killer tigers.”

Sadly, the night before the tiger workshop, a two-year-old girl was reportedly killed and partially eaten by a tiger, bringing the total number of children killed this year in Nepal by tigers to six.

Thus, retaliation - combined with financial reward - are powerful motivators for villagers to cooperate with tiger poachers.

Tiger workshop puts pressure on China

As tiger numbers rapidly decline to fulfill China’s demand for tiger parts and skins, the issue of smuggling big cat products from India to China via Nepal is one of the workshop’s hot buttons.

Nepal’s Forest Minister Deepak Bohra said via Prokerala that Nepal is pressing China to cooperate with curbing illegal trade in tiger parts.

We have forwarded a draft of the memorandum of understanding to the Chinese government and are hoping it will be signed in November.

WWF’s Ghanshyam Gurung is hopeful that progress will be made with China.

In the past, China had been refusing to acknowledge at all that there was a trade in banned animal organs. Now it is ready to talk about it.

But can China be trusted when it comes to a trade based on cultural superstitions?

In addition to systematically depleting the wild tiger population, China continues to breed tigers for commercial use in its deplorable “tiger farms” - for harvesting tiger organs, skins, and other body parts.

China’s tiger farms have been banned, but that has not stopped the proliferation or the lobbying by wealthy Chinese investors to lift the ban on tiger farms. There is also controversy surrounding a Chinese forestry document that is potentially providing cover for these “tiger farmers” to process tiger-derived products.

In order to avoid international scrutiny, Chinese officials attempted to remove internet references to the document prior to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Unfortunately, India has not fared well when seeking cooperation from China: A recent meeting between India’s Minister of Environment Jairam Ramesh and Chinese officials revealed that China is not interested in curtailing its demand for endangered tiger parts.

Year of the Tiger

The Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop is the first of a series of tiger conservation summits, which are continuing throughout 2010, the Year of the Tiger.

A conference of forest ministers from Asian countries is scheduled for January 2010 and will be held in Thailand. The final Heads of State Tiger Summit is planned for September 2010.

Many tiger conservation experts fear that 2010 will be an especially deadly year for wild tigers, when China’s “bizarre obsession” with - and demand for - tiger body parts is expected to skyrocket even higher.

Let’s hope that “international scrutiny” will force China to be held accountable for its role in pushing wild tigers to the edge of extinction.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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