Setting and Implementing Standards for Management of Wild Tigers

Abstract

Tiger numbers have collapsed so dramatically that conservationists are adopting a strategy of securing populations in priority conservation landscapes. This includes improving management effectiveness in these sites. The Conservation Assured|Tiger Standards (CA|TS) are designed to help ensure effectiveness and provide a benchmark against which to measure progress. CA|TS is a distillation of best practice and a roadmap to management effectiveness, linking management to expert-driven standards covering all aspects of management, including those which are tiger-specific (monitoring, maintenance of prey, control of poaching). Sites are audited against a set of standards and if met, are accredited as CA|TS Approved. We describe CA|TS in the context of tiger conservation, describe the evolution and philosophy of the system and consider its application across the tiger range, before drawing on lessons learned from 5 years of development. Important benefits include the independence of CA|TS from existing governmental or NGO institutions, the emphasis on regional governance and the existence of active support groups. Conversely, the participatory approach has slowed implementation. CA|TS remains more attractive to well managed sites than to sites that are struggling, although building capacity in the latter is its key aim. The close connections between people working on tiger conservation make some aspects of independent assessment challenging. Finally, if CA|TS is to succeed in its long term aims, it needs to go hand in hand with secure and adequate funding to increase management capacity in many tiger conservation areas.

Emerging Paradigms for Biodiversity and Protected Areas

“…Since core wilderness areas are the bedrock of effective protected area networks, such policy-based demotions would lead to habitat declines in cores, and degrade overall biodiversity function (Soule & Terborgh 1999) [54]. On the other hand, Pasha et al [55] describe a system to improve standards for management of wild tigers within areas. They propose that sites be audited against a broadly accepted set of standards and discuss the challenges in implementing such standards across a wide range of protected areas and within a tight community of tiger conservation professionals.…”

Untitled

“…The challenge remains to scale up the Green List programme to the point where it is truly global in operation and able to provide both a stimulus and a metric for effective conservation. A broadly similar and compatible standard has been developed and is being applied for tiger reserves in Asia (Pasha et al, 2018) with the aim of ensuring effective, long-term conservation of tigers.…”

A systematic scoping review of tiger conservation in the Terai Arc Landscape and Himalayas

“…Recent tiger conservation efforts have been attributed to the St. Petersburg Declaration in 2010, which allied the 13 tiger range countries under a common goal of global species recovery (Harihar et al, 2018). The Declaration resulted in a commitment to double the wild tiger population by 2022, commonly referred to as the Tx2 goal (Pasha et al, 2018). Attention to tiger conservation has increased significantly since 2010, resulting in stable tiger populations in eastern Russia, Bhutan, India and Nepal (Jhala et al, 2021).…”