Tiger, Tiger, Burning Out

Wild tigers may be extinct within 12 years. Tens of thousands of species are endangered. It's time we gave serious thought to how human activity is affecting wildlife.

As we enter the last few months of what the Chinese zodiac designates as the Year of the Tiger, no one should fail to heed the World Wildlife Fund’s Fund’s recent warning that wild tigers could become extinct in the next 12 years. This crisis is driven by human population growth, development, habitat destruction, and hunting. In the lucrative, illegal wildlife trade, tiger body parts are sold as magical cures for a seemingly endless variety of ailments, with China acting as a key market. Over the last century, wild tiger populations have fallen by 97 per cent, with a particularly steep decline in the last decade.

This month, a Global Tiger Summit, funded by the World Bank, will be held in St. Petersburg, where conservation groups and government representatives of the 13 countries with remaining wild tiger populations will try to devise a global recovery plan. If an effective plan is not implemented, wild tigers across Asia will almost inevitably go extinct.

The governments of the 13 tiger-range countries have already stated their commitment to doubling the tiger population by 2022. However, the politicians involved will need to do more than engage in posturing – they must direct significant resources towards the protection of tigers. Habitat must be preserved, and this means stopping development as well as providing alternatives for poor, landless farmers who are encroaching onto tiger territory. Larger spaces and protected corridors must be set aside for ecological restoration and the recovery of biodiversity. Educational efforts must be stepped up. There must be economic incentives to protect rather than hunt wildlife. Laws mandating more serious penalties for engaging in the commercial wildlife trade must be enacted and enforced. In Russia, for example, poachers can be caught with a dead tiger but do not face charges unless they are actually caught in the act of killing the animal. In addition to implementing national recovery strategies, governments will have to cooperate in trans-border operations to limit the trade.

Given the level of profit in the wildlife trade and the widespread corruption, these challenges are formidable. Nevertheless, they must be met. Although these charismatic animals are seriously endangered and deserve our attention, tigers are merely the tip of the iceberg (the one iceberg that is getting bigger instead of smaller).

At the Nagoya Summit on Biodiversity held Oct. 18-29, 2010, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biodiversity Ahmed Djoghlaf, stated in his opening remarks that we can no longer continue with business as usual and that we have in fact arrived at “a defining moment in the history of mankind.” Biodiversity is decreasing at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is having a dangerous impact on wildlife in the form of resource extraction, habitat destruction, conversion of land for agriculture and development, pollution, hunting, fishing, and climate change. A significant portion of this is linked with the environmentally-destructive global meat system.

Since 1940, we have seen a 40 per cent decline in the abundance of species. Of the 47,677 species known so far, 17,291 are in danger of extinction, with amphibians constituting the most threatened group (1,895 of the planet’s 6,285 amphibian species face extinction). The world’s oceans are being emptied of life, and million of hectares of primary forest are lost each year. We are witnessing the greatest mass extinctions since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. Along with threat of nuclear destruction, this is surely the major crisis facing us today.

Noting that we are losing biodiversity at unprecedented levels, perhaps 1,000 times higher than normal historical rates of extinction, Djoghlaf said that if we allow this to continue, “We shall soon reach a tipping point with irreversible and irreparable damage to the capacity of the planet to continue sustaining life on earth.”

The warnings could not be starker. While we rightly hope that the St. Petersburg meetings will prompt the governments of the tiger-range countries to undertake effective measures to protect tigers, we must all ask ourselves serious questions about how our own consumption habits are affecting all the other beings with whom we share this planet.