Tiger conservation Environment Notes for UPSC

Tiger is an umbrella species. It’s conservation automatically ensures the conversation of a large number of flora and fauna and entire ecosystems.
The Tigers in the wild signifies, healthy livelihood, protects the genetic diversity, and is the guardian and an indicator of a healthy forests. The tiger is at the top of the food chain. Therefore, the healthy presence of tiger population indicates healthy forests.
The presence of tigers helps maintain the population of herbivores like Deers, Wild Buffaloes, Antelopes and Omnivores like Boars in the jungle. Nature is thus balanced with the right proportion of predators for prey. By taking away one important predator, prey will increase at the cost of habitat which finally impacts mankind.

Indian Tiger

IUCN Red List: Endangered
Wildlife protection Act: Schedule 1
CITES: Appendix 1
The tiger reserves are constituted on a core/buffer strategy. The core areas have the legal status of a national park or a sanctuary. The buffer or peripheral areas are a mix of forest and non-forest land, managed as a multiple use area.
India is home to 75% of global tiger population.

A statutory body constituted under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for tiger conservation.
It is headed by the minister of MOEFCC.

Providing statutory authority to Project Tiger so that compliance of its directives becomes legal.
Fostering accountability of Centre-State in management of Tiger Reserves, by providing a basis for MoU with States within our federal structure.
Providing for an oversight by Parliament.
Addressing livelihood interests of local people in areas surrounding Tiger Reserves.
Monitoring System for Tigers: Intensive Protection and Ecological Status (M-STrIPES) – It is a software-based monitoring system launched across Indian tiger reserves by the NTCA.

Project Tiger launched in 1973 is a 100% centrally sponsored scheme.
It gives fund help to the ‘tiger range States’, for in-situ conservation of tigers in the chosen tiger reserves.

To guarantee a viable population of tigers for financial, scientific, aesthetic, social and ecological values.
Limit elements which lead to the reduction of tiger habitat and to tone them down by suitable strategy.
Site-particular eco-development to decrease the dependency of local individuals and indigenous people on tiger reserve.

Conservation Assured (CA) is a new conservation tool to set best practice standards for effective management of target species.
Launched in 2013. Till date 17 tiger reserves from India have been accredited by CA|TS.
CA fulfils the requirement for protected area management effectiveness in international agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Program of Work on Protected Areas and will help national governments, and their partners in conservation, to meet the CBD’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity.
CA is also linked to and partnered in the development of IUCN’s Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas.

World Wildlife Foundation had launched its ambitious TX2 program at St Petersburg Tiger Summit in 2010 which aims to double world tiger population by 2022, which is the year of the tiger in the Chinese calendar.

TX2 Program by WWF

Nepal is set to become the first country in the world to double its tiger population as part of the World Wildlife Foundation’s (WWF) ‘Tx2’ program.

Other Initiatives

Global Tiger Initiative (GTI): It was launched in 2008 as a global alliance of governments, international organizations, civil society, the conservation and scientific communities and the private sector and includes organization like the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), etc. It aims to work together to save wild tigers from extinction. In 2013, the scope was broadened to include Snow Leopards. The initiative is led by the 13 tiger range countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam).
Global Tiger Forum (GTF) – Global Tiger Forum is an international intergovernmental body exclusively set up for the conservation of tigers in the wild in the range countries.
Out of the 13 tiger range countries, seven are currently members of GTF: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Vietnam besides non-tiger range country U.K.
The secretariat is based in New Delhi, India.
GTF’s goal is to highlight the rationale for tiger preservation and provide leadership and a common approach throughout the world in order to safeguard the survival of the tiger, its prey, and its habitat. The GTF is to attain the goal through a set of objectives.

NTCA in collaboration with Wildlife Institute of India has published a document titled ‘Connecting Tiger Populations for Long Term Conservation’ which has mapped 32 major corridors across the country.
Currently, there is no provision in the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 to notify and conserve areas as ‘Corridors’.
State governments can notify tiger corridors as Eco-Sensitive zones, conservation reserves or community reserves. They are provided statutory basis by the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

State Governments to establish a TCF in each tiger reserve for facilitating & supporting its management for conservation of tiger and biodiversity, apart from taking eco-tourism and eco-development initiatives by involving people in such process.
The area of operation of the TCF shall be the tiger reserve and its adjoining landscape, forming the impact zone with possible corridor value for dispersal of wild animals from the tiger reserve.

Eco-bridge has been conceptualised by National Board for Wildlife and Wildlife Institute of India.
Telangana became the first state in India to have eco-friendly bridges for the movement of tigers over a canal cutting across a tiger corridor linking the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra with the forests in Telangana’s Komaram Bheem Asifabad district.

The e-eye is a software-based system where high resolution thermal and infrared cameras capture all activities of Tigers. This system of surveillance is being expanded to keep track of tigers in wildlife sanctuaries and to prevent poaching and animal-human conflict.

Tigers in the Ranthambore Tiger reserve are facing threat from canine distemper virus. It gets transferred from dogs to tigers and leopards in the national park. This virus was also responsible for the deaths of lions in Gir National Park, Gujarat.
Canine Distemper Virus (CDV): that can be transmitted from CDV – infected dogs living in and around wildlife sanctuaries into Tigers has started to raise concern among wildlife biologists.
Canine distemper is a contagious disease caused by a virus that attacks the respiratory, gastrointestinal and nervous systems of puppies and dogs.