Mapping areas most vulnerable to poaching and trafficking of tigers | Janaki Lenin

The case of the ‘Putin’s tiger’, Kuzya, has brought the dangers of poaching back into the spotlight. Russian president Vladimir Putin released the 19-month-old Siberian tiger in a remote forest in May this year. Five months later, one week ago, Kuzya swam across the frigid waters of the Amur river into China. The event set diplomatic lines jangling. China scrambled to dismantle poachers’ traps and set up more than 60 camera traps in the area. Kuzya and his siblings were orphaned after their mother fell victim to a poacher two years ago. Illegal hunting is one of the most serious threats to tigers; a dead tiger is said to be worth $10,000 (£6,300). Even though Indian tigers rarely wander into China, they are in grave danger too. Poachers are more interested in tiger bones, an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, than pelts. Last month, 40 tigers appeared to have gone missing in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Preliminary estimates of the census this year revealed there were fewer tigers than in 2010 in some wildlife sanctuaries. Poachers are feared to have targeted India’s national animal. The severity of illegal hunting was revealed in early 2005, when it became obvious that tigers had been wiped out from Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan. In 2009, poachers cleaned out Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, of its striped cats. In both cases, officials were in denial for several months, perhaps fearing the blot of increasing incidents of crime on their watch. Even now, wildlife activists suspect officials of deliberately under-reporting unnatural tiger deaths. Do low wildlife crime figures indicate dereliction of duty or better enforcement? In ‘Tiger poaching and trafficking in India,’ recently published in the Biological Conservation journal, Koustubh Sharma and his co-authors say illegal hunting of tigers is a specialised traditional job. Family groups of poachers operate in areas with which they are familiar and where they have trusted networks. Using statistical models, the authors estimate the probability of crime and its detection across the country. They identified factors that increase the risk of poaching in each district by analysing data collected since 1972. Some districts near tiger habitats suffer a particularly high risk of poaching, while in others the risks have declined. But at least 17 districts, far from tiger forests, suffer from a “high probability of occurrence of tiger crime.” Sharma explains: “Delhi, for example, is far from tiger habitats but scores high on tiger crime probably because it is a trade hub. Tiger parts are trafficked through these 17 districts.” Wildlife criminals prefer to travel with their illegal consignments by rail rather than on highways. Conveniently for poachers, trains pass through many forested areas and the criminals can be hard to trace on the packed carriages. Buses, however, can be easily intercepted, and since they carry fewer passengers than trains, traffickers find it harder to make a safe getaway. Sharma says, “The pattern is changing now, after 2012.” The paper identifies the areas at greatest risk of poaching and trafficking to “a narrow corridor running from South India, through Central India, all the way to specific border districts in the north. It is worth noting that a large number of districts are at high risk of tiger crime along India’s border with Nepal, which is also considered as the main international hub for trafficking of tiger parts into China.” Along the porous Indo-Nepal border alone the lives of about 240 tigers are at risk. The authors of the paper conclude, Non-detection of tiger crime does not necessarily mean that no such crime is taking place. Conversely, an increase in the number of reports of tiger crime cannot be necessarily interpreted as an increase in crime rate, as it could instead be a reflection of better enforcement.” This study is the first one of its kind to analyse the risks of tiger poaching across the country. As the authors note, the “biggest stumbling block to curbing tiger crime is the lack of intelligence led enforcement.” Studies like this give insights on where and how poachers work, so authorities can focus their efforts. Wildlife law enforcement is upgrading its tools to confront the threat posed by illegal hunters. Maharashtra has the country’s first cyber crime cell devoted to tracking wildlife crime. Its monitoring efforts led to the arrest of 34 people complicit in killing a tiger in Melghat Tiger Reserve. The reserve is in Amaravati, one of the 73 districts identified by the paper’s authors as tiger crime hotspots for the period 2009-2012. Sleuths tracked the main culprit across three northern states and finally arrested him in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Few tigers can boast of the presidential protection that Kuzya enjoys. The trajectory of his adventure, beamed by the radio transmitter around his neck, will no doubt be watched by Kremlin and Beijing. The odds of his survival are stronger than for most tigers.