All Is Not Lost
To seek good environmental news nowadays feels like seeking fragments of Earth-friendly flotsam bobbing on toxic seas of human depredation of our living world. But at times glimmers of hope help ward off despair.
Herewith three glimmers from the world of tigers:
First, a survey, announced in 2016, found wild tiger numbers up worldwide for the first time in a century. See Survey finds tiger numbers up 2010-2016
(It’s sad indeed that we have to consider tiger numbers in the three-to-four thousands as a success, when at the beginning of the last century the number the tiger population was estimated at 100,000.)
Note there are six existing subspecies of tiger (according to National Geographic), of which there are stunning pix and capsule descriptions to be found here.
“Subspecies” are populations of tigers that are separated by geographic range and/or morphology; all can viably interbreed, but they do not cross paths. Bengal tigers—the ones you’re most likely to see in a zoo—make up about 70% of the aggregate number of wild tigers. With the other 30% split up among the remainder, the risk that any single subspecies could get wiped out is great. Indochinese and South China tigers are especially imperiled.
A second piece of moderately good news is that China has created a large refuge dedicated to preserving Siberian tiger and Amur leopard habitat as part of their expanded national park system (more on the project Xi Jinping has dubbed “Ecological Civilization, ” in another post.). See Chinese refuge for tigers, leopards
Third, a campaign to protect tigers against poaching has achieved spectacular success in Nepal. The key was setting up community-based anti-poaching units. The claim reported by the World Wildlife Fund is that zero poaching of tigers was achieved in 2011, 2014, 2015, and 2016. See: http://tigers.panda.org/news/achieve-zero-poaching/
Are “charismatic” species overemphasized?
Tigers get loads of fanfare because they are large, powerful, and beautiful: charismatic. Tigers, however, are not as essential to a healthy biome as are humbler creatures. Take, for example, amphibians, who help to purify water, keep insect populations in check, serve as prey to larger animals, and are reservoirs of defensive toxins which are proving valuable in scientific research as well as in medicine, to include one being developed as a non-addictive painkiller.* What makes wild tiger protection valuable is the requirement to save habitat, as reflected in the creation of the Siberian tiger refuge in China. Along with chunks of habitat large enough for tigers to thrive in, comes the protection of less charismatic creatures whose biodiversity can be key to long-term environmental success.
[I apologize for once more playing a variation on the theme of are-we-too-focused-on-charismatic-species-? It resurfaced here because the survey reported follows up on an earlier survey, indicating the uptick in tiger numbers reported in 2015 was not merely a fluke.]
Tigers enjoy strong preservation efforts from environmental NGOs, and a lot of donations from First World countries. Yet, the question persists as to whether these are the best uses of resources spread increasingly thin by human assaults on wildlife and wildlife habitat everywhere. Why not put a similar effort into saving frogs? On the World Wildlife Fund website is found the statement, “if the tigers go extinct, the whole ecosystem would collapse.” This pronouncement did not come with a citation of any scientific research. I don’t buy it, but you can read it here. Similar arguments are used to support protections for African lions.
Few people besides research scientists, park managers, and dedicated environmentalists are donating funds to protect amphibians and reptiles. (The worldwide amphibian population crash is a complicated subject I’ll address in a later post—suffice it to say that the greatest threat to amphibians seems to be climate change.**) How many times do you get an appeal from an environmental group to protect frogs? I’d bet once for every ten appeals you get on elephant, or lion, tiger, or wolf protection.
I also addressed the question of whether concentrated efforts to save charismatic megafauna—as opposed to more humble creatures such as frogs— makes sense ecologically, in an earlier post on tigers and leopards, and another concerning elephants to be found at prioritizing elephant protection
Once again, note the symbolic importance of charismatic species: habitat protection in itself isn’t sexy, but when alarms bells ring for elephants and tigers, people sit up and take notice. So we take what we can get.
================footnotes follow=====================
* For ecological importance of amphibians, see http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/biodiversity/amphibians/ecological.htm
Also http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/frogs-the-thin-green-line-a-world-without-amphibians/4852/
Amphibian toxins studied as medicines medicine: http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/frogs/medieval_magic.html
** Explained in brief in a Scientific American piece: The mystery of the amphibian crisis