Tigers — India & Southeast Asia

"World Wildlife Fund is committed to doubling the number of wild tigers by securing funds to halt poaching in the 12 most important tiger landscapes, protecting tiger habitat at an unprecedented scale, and clamping down hard on illegal tiger trade... In 2010, [they] supported a Nepal-India resolution to conserve biodiversity including tigers, which will include joint monitoring and intelligence sharing. A similar formal understanding was signed by Nepal with China on biodiversity conservation, especially curbing the trade of illegal wildlife parts, including tigers."

"The best hope of the survival of this subspecies is in the Dawna Tennaserim landscape on the Thailand-Myanmar border where perhaps 250 tigers remain... Access to the areas where Indochinese tigers live is often restricted, and biologists have only recently been granted limited permits for field surveys. As a result, there is still much to learn about the status of these tigers in the wild." World Wildlife Fund is actively seeking to establish formal protection in the area.

"Currently, about 90% of Malaysia’s tiger habitats are contained within four states which still have a substantial amount of forest cover: Pahang, Perak, Kelantan and Terengganu. The National Tiger Action Plan for Malaysianas also identified three priority areas for tigers in Peninsular Malaysia, namely the Belum-Temengor Forest Complex, Taman Negara and the Endau-Rompin Forest Complex.... In 2010, at the Tiger Summit in St Petersburg, Malaysia and the 12 other tiger range countries committed to the most ambitious and visionary species conservation goal ever set: TX2 – to double wild tiger numbers by 2022, the next year of the tiger."

"In the comprehensive 2004 TRAFFIC East Asia report Nowhere to Hide: The Trade in Sumatran Tiger, authors Chris R. Shepherd and Nolan Magnus estimated the number of wild tigers on Sumatra as probably fewer than 400, living in six protected areas. Another 100 or fewer tigers outside the protected areas will probably not last long." The study also notes that "poaching for trade is responsible for the vast majority (over 78%) of estimated tiger deaths." Today, Indonesia has committed to doubling its tiger numbers from an estimated 325 (250-400) by 2022.

"Officials from Myanmar formally announced today that the entire Hukaung Valley would be declared a Protected Tiger Area. The declaration officially protects an area the size of Vermont and marks a major step forward in saving one of the most endangered species on the planet... Isolated in Myanmar, the Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve stretches approximately 8,452 square miles in the northernmost part of the country... The designation protects some of the last expanses of closed forest in the Indo-Pacific region."

A big step forward was IUCN recognizing the Sumatran Tiger as critically endangered. All populations are thought to be in the five national parks on the island. “Of the five national parks, the largest population, 110 tigers, was identified in the Gunung Leuser National Park of northern Sumatra… The conservation of the Sumatran tiger calls for a comprehensive management strategy that takes full account of the complex assemblage of social, biological and landscape ecological factors in operation... A first step in the process must be amassing political will. Indonesia has excelled here, with the tiger now recognised as a ‘key species’ in national biodiversity conservation strategies.”

"Indonesia passed a Conservation Act in 1990 designed to protect the tigers of Sumatra. In 1994 the government formulated an ‘Indonesian Sumatran Tiger Conservation Strategy', highlighting the need for securing and protecting the remaining tiger population and its habitat."

"The expansion of human populations, deforestation, elimination of natural prey, and the increased use of land for agricultural purposes have all been major problems for the tiger throughout its range...by 1980 the Javan tiger was extinct."

Tigers are given total protection by the Malaysian government, at which time there were only 300 tigers estimated to be left in Peninsular Malaysia.

Peninsular Malaysia protects its vulnerable Javan tigers, giving them full legal protection in a specially reserved national park. but it is too late to save them from extinction.

President Indira Gandhi backed what may have been the most comprehensive single-species conservation plan of its time "Project Tiger was incorporated in 1973 with nine tiger reserves covering an area of 16,339 sq.km., which has increased to 37,761 sq.km. in 27 Tiger Reserves... The main idea behind the project was to provide safe havens for tigers where they could flourish as a species and hopefully reverse the startling decline in their population. The project initially had 9 parks that were chosen for it's implementation. This number has slowly risen and a total of 19 parks are now attached to the project."

“Chitwan is recognised as a primary success story in tiger conservation: the lessons from this valley provide one roadmap for securing a future for wild tigers… The local community was responsible for resource management and protection in the Park’s buffer area. By providing economic incentives and developing self-sufficiency, villagers have created alternative sources of forest resources previously available only in the Park. They have also regenerated 16.5 km2 of prime habitat for the tiger and the Asian greater one-horned rhinoceros.”

“From 1957 to 1992, forest clearing accelerated rapidly and the protected area system in Peninsular Malaysia increased from 5.3 to only 6.3% of the land area… The few new protected areas were in ‘economically undesirable areas’, usually not the best habitats for wildlife, while some of the best land in the older reserves was excised for agriculture, mining, and logging. This loss of optimal habitat, along with the poaching by hunters, caused rapid declines in tiger numbers.”

“Experts fear that the subspecies is disappearing faster than the other three subspecies, and every week one is trapped, shot or poisoned. Poaching is high, since most of the countries harbouring the subspecies are consumer countries and tiger products are available in local markets… Incidentally, up until 1950, the tiger in Malaysia was accorded a status lower than that given to a wild pig or bandicoot and was to be killed by every possible means. In Myanmar it is still not illegal to kill a tiger.”