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 Tiger Corridor Initiative (TCI) will identify and create safe passages for at least some tigers to move between protected core populations and throughout the human landscape. 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.
The success of this effort is predicated on protecting and increasing key tiger populations throughout tiger range, then predicting or creating potential tiger travel routes through the human-dominated landscape. To accomplish this, Panthera is working with tiger experts and detailed geographic databases 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.
Read Panthera's Tiger Report Card: The State of the Tiger.
More than a theoretical model
As with jaguars, Panthera’s efforts do not end with the theoretical model. After potential tiger corridors are identified, they will be 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 Himalayan-Indo-Malayan 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, a national tiger corridor through the island of Sumatra, 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 a daunting, highly ambitious plan. It is well suited to one of the world’s most daunting, magnificent wild creatures.
