Panthera

Tigers live alongside some of the densest and fastest growing human populations in the world. In an effort to successfully conserve tigers in an increasingly human dominated landscape, the main goal of the Tiger Corridor Initiative (TCI) is to identify and create safe passages for tigers to move between protected core populations and throughout human landscapes. Based on Panthera’s genetic corridor model for jaguars, the TCI envisions regional, bi-national, and national tiger corridors that ensure linked networks of healthy, genetically-related tiger populations.

While the Tigers Forever program is charged with securing breeding tiger populations, Panthera is looking into the future to identify and secure the critical connections between remaining, significant populations of wild tigers. Panthera’s Tiger Corridor Initiative (TCI) provided the first range-wide assessment of potential corridors between protected core populations and identified where resources should be directed to preserve genetic exchange between populations; this is a key component of long-term population viability.

The TCI set an important baseline and represents an ambitious long-term target for range-wide tiger conservation efforts. In the immediate future, efforts to conserve population connectivity are focusing on maintaining functional links between the most important tiger populations.  To accomplish this, Panthera is working with tiger experts across tiger range, and utilizing a combination of GIS and remote sensing (satellite imagery) techniques to accurately pinpoint current tiger populations, suitable or potential tiger habitat, and likely dispersal corridors between tiger populations. Because tiger dispersal is still so poorly known, Panthera is creating a geographically-based model to predict routes of travel that provide the most secure passage with the best available habitat.

More than a theoretical model
As with jaguars, Panthera’s efforts do not end with the theoretical model. After identifying potential tiger corridors,  they are verified on the ground to ensure that these areas indeed possess the attributes that a tiger will need while traveling or establishing a new range. Information such as presence of tiger prey, current land use activities, future development projects, socio-economic data, and social attitudes towards tigers will be used to assess suitability of the corridor. If a potential corridor has become too degraded, habitat restoration efforts may be carried out or alternative routes of travel will be identified. All efforts to create the Tiger Corridor include local and regional stakeholder involvement. The success of the corridor throughout the human landscape will only come with the understanding and acceptance of the people and communities being asked to live among tigers.

Corridors on many scales
Severe fragmentation of present-day tiger habitat, as well as the existence of one extant island population, mandates the design of several tiger corridors. The largest and most expansive corridor being considered by Panthera is the multi-national Eastern Himalayan corridor, potentially connecting tiger populations from Nepal into Bhutan and Northern India through Myanmar, Thailand, Lao P.D.R., Cambodia, and terminating in Malaysia. Other important genetic corridors include a bi-national China-Russia Tiger Corridor, connecting Siberian tiger populations of Sikhote Alin, Russia and Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinces, China, and several possible Indian corridors, particularly the Western Ghats of Karnataka State.

Even if Tigers Forever and other tiger conservation initiatives are successful, the greatest hope against extinction of this species will be the ability of young, dispersing individuals to make their way to other tiger populations. As with other large, wide-ranging species, a long-term conservation strategy must go beyond isolated protected areas and plan for ways in which animals can move and survive in human-dominated landscapes. The Tiger Corridor Initiative is grand in scope, and a highly ambitious plan. But that is what is needed in order to help save one of the most magnificent creatures to walk this earth.