SECURE CONNECTED HABITAT
Ensuring tiger movement and dispersal
Securing ecological connectivity and human wellbeing in the face of ever more crowded landscapes on Earth is the biggest conservation challenge for tigers in most parts of their range.
WWF's landscape approach builds effective management of an area through long-term, strategic collaboration among multiple stakeholders, with the purpose of ensuring living and thriving areas of habitat suitable for people and wildlife. This approach involves convening key stakeholders to build consensus about landscape management and decision making and is useful when there are diverse resource requirements, interactions and interdependencies in resource management.
Connectivity between protected areas is integral for easy dispersal of tiger populations, and other wildlife, in conservation landscapes. With wildlife populations declining globally, it is imperative to prioritise large natural areas and interconnected habitats for species to move, breed and thrive.
CA|TS
Protected areas are home to a majority of wildlife throughout the globe and are attributed as the main reason behind the safeguarding of current wildlife populations. However, protected area management can be a complex system with a multitude of challenges, issues and needs. CA|TS was developed as a tool to provide incentive for improving the effectiveness of protected and conserved areas and key sites.
Developing CA|TS over the last ten years has involved a huge collaborative effort in standard setting, advocacy, software development, training, and much more including a 10 year CA|TS report which was published this year. For the sites and people involved it has represented a major commitment in supporting national systems to implement CA|TS. Over the last decade, 128 tiger conservation sites from seven countries have been CA|TS registered.
In 2022, four sites (three in India and one in Russia) increased the total number of CA|TS accredited sites to 25. This includes 17 tiger reserves and three forest divisions in India, two sites in Russia, two in Bhutan and one in Nepal. These sites have shown that they meet the standard expected for tiger conservation. Some connecting tiger sites are now CA|TS accredited, for example Royal Manas National Park in Bhutan and the adjoining Manas Tiger Reserve in India, and Chitwan National Park in Nepal and the adjoining Valmiki Tiger Reserve in India.
Accelerating progress
Protecting the places where tigers live and breed is the backbone of the tiger recovery strategy. The most important sites to protect are those that are or have the potential to become breeding grounds, allowing tigers to disperse across larger landscapes. These sites are ‘heartlands’.
The second call this past year for the Heartlands Accelerator Fund, was disbursed to 10 projects in six countries (Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand). The portfolio includes a diverse amount of activities such as human tiger coexistence, prey management, habitat management, protection, and stakeholder management - all CA|TS elements aimed towards increasing tiger populations and improving habitat in these heartlands.
Tigress and cubs spotted on camera trap in Valmiki Tiger Reserve. © WWF India / Bihar Forest department
Tigress and cubs spotted on camera trap in Valmiki Tiger Reserve. © WWF India / Bihar Forest department
Tiger sighted in the Brahmaputra Landscape, India. ©
Tiger sighted in the Brahmaputra Landscape, India. ©
Valmiki Tiger Reserve, India. © Kamlesh K Maurya / WWF India
Valmiki Tiger Reserve, India. © Kamlesh K Maurya / WWF India
Honouring excellence
for tigers
The TX2 awards are endorsed by a consortium of partnership organisations including the Conservation Assured Tiger Standards (CA|TS), Fauna and Flora International, Global Tiger Forum, IUCN’s Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Programme, Panthera, UNDP, The Lion’s Share, Wildlife Conservation Society and WWF.
Tigers captured on camera traps in Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve © WWF-India
Tigers captured on camera traps in Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve © WWF-India
Tiger spotted on camera traps set in Bardia National Park © Emmanuel Rondeau / WWF-US
Tiger spotted on camera traps set in Bardia National Park © Emmanuel Rondeau / WWF-US
TX2 Award
In February 2022, Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve and Nepal’s Bardia National Park were awarded for doubling tiger populations within a protected area. The tiger population of award winner, Bardia National Park, witnessed an increase of almost five-fold from 18 tigers in 2009 to 87 in 2018 - an astounding achievement given it is situated in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, the Terai Arc Landscape in Nepal. Sathyamangalam, designated a Tiger Reserve in 2013 in the Western Ghats of India, was home to only 25 tigers in 2011 but today there are an estimated 80 individuals in the area. With proper prey abundance, protection and connectivity, Sathyamangalam saw a close to four fold increase, an achievement that warrants celebration.
Conservation Excellence Award
The Conservation Excellence award was presented to the transboundary Khata Forest Conservation Area. The 15-mile pathway along the shared border of Nepal’s Bardia National Park and India’s Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary maintains connectivity for tiger populations between the two countries. The corridor’s incredible community based conservation efforts have been successful in securing safe passage for wildlife in the corridor. In turn, the increase in wildlife through the corridor has also helped local tourism in the area and provided opportunities for community members to engage first-hand in conservation.
Tiger spotted on camera trap in the Khata Forest Conservation Area. © Emmanuel Rondeau / WWF-US
Tiger spotted on camera trap in the Khata Forest Conservation Area. © Emmanuel Rondeau / WWF-US
The Khata Forest Conservation Area now thrives and is home to not just tigers but to other wildlife too, such as the greater one horned rhino. ©DoFSC / WWF Nepal
The Khata Forest Conservation Area now thrives and is home to not just tigers but to other wildlife too, such as the greater one horned rhino. ©DoFSC / WWF Nepal
FEATURE STORY: connectivity ACROSS THE TIGER RANGE
TIGER HABITAT CONSERVATION IN NEPAL
Shuklaphanta National Park, a transboundary national park in the western forests of Nepal directly connected to Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in India through Lagga Bagga, is home to the largest herd of swamp deers in the world and has seen significant growth in tigers with numbers increasing from 8 in 2009 to 36 in 2022.
As a transboundary site, Shuklaphanta is imperative to tiger movement and dispersal between India and Nepal, and could serve as a source of tigers for other sites in the Terai Arc Landscape. Following patterns that lead to the success behind other protected areas in Nepal, WWF supported extensive habitat mapping this year to identify important grasslands and wetlands. This exercise was able to identify the most important and frequently visited wetlands, along with highlighting key issues in the habitat such as invasive species management and the need for more expansive grasslands. This data has now fed into the protected area management action plans, and will aid in conducting additional improvement of habitat to boost tiger and its prey recovery.
Today, the core area of Shuklaphanta alone, one of Nepal’s youngest national parks, holds 11 tigers/100 sq.km and could be key to the dispersal of tigers in low land areas and high altitude in the years to come. Shuklaphanta National Park along with Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, Boom-Champawat, and Bramhadev-Dadeldhura forms the circle of life for survival of tigers along the complex.
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION FOR CONNECTIVITY
Connectivity between habitats to allow movement and dispersal for tigers is one of the main components behind the increasing population of tigers in China. A report, “Cross-Border Tiger Conservation Cooperation between China and Russia in the Past 30 Years”, compiled by WWF, Northeast Forestry University, Nature and Ecology Research Institute of Heilongjiang province and Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park was approved by the experts of the review team led by the Forestry and Grassland Bureaus.
The board of experts agreed that the rapid recovery of the Amur tiger and leopard populations in the past 30 years was closely related to the transboundary efforts of China and Russia - decades worth of efforts in the making. Since the 1990s, China and Russia have signed the agreements on the conservation of biodiversity, Amur tigers and other endangered species in the Amur Heilong Eco-Regional Complex. As one would expect, this population is expected to increase further by constructing ecological corridors and restoration of tiger habitats.
Transboundary efforts have subsequently increased with wildlife authorities in China and Russia, together with scientific research institutions and NGOs, implementing multiple conservation projects. This has resulted in an increase in China’s tiger numbers from 12-14 in 2000 to 50 today.
COLLABORATING ON CONNECTIVITY IN INDIA
Maintaining habitat connectivity is a key element in the conservation and management of endangered species, such as the tiger. Effective landscape-scale connectivity conservation requires looking beyond organisational boundaries and working collaboratively to achieve a shared conservation vision to sustain ecological processes in rapidly changing landscapes. Through this was born the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors, a one of its kind initiative for connectivity conservation. WWF-India facilitated the formation of this informal network which currently has 12 NGOs.
The coalition aims to develop multi-organisation synergy to adopt a data driven approach for conservation planning in corridors, promote better human wildlife coexistence and influence economic development to minimise impacts on connectivity in major terrestrial and freshwater habitats. Its pillars are to generate actionable information to drive evidence-based decision making; enable local stewardship for corridors and identify opportunities to pragmatically reconcile conservation and economic development goals to promote land use planning that supports the future of people and wildlife.
Rajaji Tiger Reserve in the west of the Indian Terai Arc Landscape has seen the impact of infrastructure development more than most. A growing city, railway line, and highway have sliced through the centre of the reserve making it near impossible for tigers to move between the eastern and western regions.
In a significant discovery, toward the end of 2022, WWF documented tiger movement into western Rajaji from the Chilla-Motichur corridor for the first time in 20 years. WWF and partners have been instrumental in constructing an overpass for vehicles in this area to reduce the impact of infrastructure on connectivity and this tiger movement confirms these efforts are needed.
Built with Shorthand