Sir
Your News Snapshot of tigers in India's Nagarhole National Park (“A night out in the park” Nature 444, 413; 2006) quotes a conservationist's view that tiger conservation is more at risk from loss of habitat than from the tiger trade.
This may be true in a few protected areas such as Nagarhole, where anti-poaching laws protecting tigers and their prey are strictly enforced. However, only 23% of the priority landscapes where tigers survive today are protected areas (E. Dinerstein et al. Setting Priorities for the Conservation and Recovery of Wild Tigers: 2005-2015: A User's Guide WWF, WCS, Smithsonian and NFWF-STF, 2006), and enforcement in many of those places is poor. In 2005, for example, poachers were found to have wiped out the entire tiger population of Sariska Tiger Reserve in India (D. Banks and B. Wright Skinning the Cat: Crime and Politics of the Big Cat Skin Trade Environmental Investigation Agency/Wildlife Protection Society of India, 2006).
If we want to save wild tigers, we will have to reduce demand for tiger parts and crack down on illegal trafficking throughout Asia. We also have to improve on-the-ground efforts beyond reserve boundaries to achieve real landscape-level conservation outcomes.
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Gratwicke, B. Poaching laws are useless without solid enforcement. Nature 445, 147 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/445147b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/445147b
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