PLoS ONE (Jan 2018)

Recovery planning towards doubling wild tiger Panthera tigris numbers: Detailing 18 recovery sites from across the range.

  • Abishek Harihar,
  • Pranav Chanchani,
  • Jimmy Borah,
  • Rachel Jane Crouthers,
  • Yury Darman,
  • Thomas N E Gray,
  • Shariff Mohamad,
  • Benjamin Miles Rawson,
  • Mark Darmaraj Rayan,
  • Jennifer Lucy Roberts,
  • Robert Steinmetz,
  • Sunarto Sunarto,
  • Febri Anggriawan Widodo,
  • Meraj Anwar,
  • Shiv Raj Bhatta,
  • Jayam Peter Prem Chakravarthi,
  • Youde Chang,
  • Gordon Congdon,
  • Chittaranjan Dave,
  • Soumen Dey,
  • Boominathan Durairaj,
  • Pavel Fomenko,
  • Harish Guleria,
  • Mudit Gupta,
  • Ghana Gurung,
  • Bopanna Ittira,
  • Jyotirmay Jena,
  • Alexey Kostyria,
  • Krishna Kumar,
  • Vijay Kumar,
  • Phurba Lhendup,
  • Peiqi Liu,
  • Sabita Malla,
  • Kamlesh Maurya,
  • Vijay Moktan,
  • Nguyen Dao Ngoc Van,
  • Karmila Parakkasi,
  • Rungnapa Phoonjampa,
  • Worrapan Phumanee,
  • Anil Kumar Singh,
  • Carrie Stengel,
  • Samundra Ambuhang Subba,
  • Kanchan Thapa,
  • Tiju C Thomas,
  • Christopher Wong,
  • Michael Baltzer,
  • Dipankar Ghose,
  • Sejal Worah,
  • Joseph Vattakaven

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207114
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 11
p. e0207114

Abstract

Read online

With less than 3200 wild tigers in 2010, the heads of 13 tiger-range countries committed to doubling the global population of wild tigers by 2022. This goal represents the highest level of ambition and commitment required to turn the tide for tigers in the wild. Yet, ensuring efficient and targeted implementation of conservation actions alongside systematic monitoring of progress towards this goal requires that we set site-specific recovery targets and timelines that are ecologically realistic. In this study, we assess the recovery potential of 18 sites identified under WWF's Tigers Alive Initiative. We delineated recovery systems comprising a source, recovery site, and support region, which need to be managed synergistically to meet these targets. By using the best available data on tiger and prey numbers, and adapting existing species recovery frameworks, we show that these sites, which currently support 165 (118-277) tigers, have the potential to harbour 585 (454-739) individuals. This would constitute a 15% increase in the global population and represent over a three-fold increase within these specific sites, on an average. However, it may not be realistic to achieve this target by 2022, since tiger recovery in 15 of these 18 sites is contingent on the initial recovery of prey populations, which is a slow process. We conclude that while sustained conservation efforts can yield significant recoveries, it is critical that we commit our resources to achieving the biologically realistic targets for these sites even if the timelines are extended.