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Tigers are critically endangered with less than 4,000 remaining in the wild, if nothing is done to protect this species, it is predicted they will become extinct in the wild in just 20 years time. Here at Shepreth Wildlife Park we have been raising funds for 21st Century Tiger for the past 5 years.
21st Century Tiger is a wild tiger conservation partnership between the Zoological Society of London and Global Tiger Patrol and one of the top six tiger funding agencies globally, contributing over £1.4 million to almost 100 tiger projects in eight countries worldwide.
To help raise funds, Shepreth hosts an annual Tiger Party on 4th August in celebration of our tigers birthday.
Please join us this year to continue our efforts to help save the tigers from extinction in the wild, so far we have raised over £21,000, but we want to raise even more for this magnificent species.
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WILDLIFE VETS INTERNATIONAL
An important population of wild tigers remain in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest in Bangladesh. Conflict between humans and tigers have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of humans, tigers and livestock.
Wildlife Vets International has been asked by the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh to help implement their Sunderbans Tiger Project, working to protect tigers and villagers. A focus of this project is to strengthen the infrastructure for managing problem tigers. WVI specialist vet, Dr. John Lewis, is providing veterinary training to conservation personnel to immobilise, capture and transport tigers that stray close to humans.
Shepreth Wildlife Park also raises funds for this charity, more information can be found at this link.
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TIGER SWIMATHONS
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On 8th September every year Manager, Rebecca Willers and friends Kelly and Natasha, have swam to raise money for 21st Century Tiger at Royston Leisure Centre. They would like to say a big thank you to the Manager, Richard Allan, for supporting them with this annual event.
The girls have raised over £5,000 for 21st Century Tiger.
Rebecca is now planning to go one step further and is swimming 1 mile of the River Thames on 2nd July 2011.
Please visit www.justgiving.com/tigerswim
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If you would like to donate please do not hesitate to contact rebecca@sheprethwildlifepark.co.uk
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SAVING THE SUMATRAN TIGER
Rebecca Willers, Animal Manager, reports back from Indonesia.
Having just returned from volunteering for the tiger conservation projects funded by 21st Century Tiger in Indonesia, I am now determined more than ever to raise more money to aid the fight for survival of the planet's biggest cat species.
We have been fundraising to help save wild tigers for the last seven years at Shepreth, and having raised over £30,000 for an array of conservation charities, and recently winning an award for our annual ‘Tiger Day’, I wanted to go one step further and actually get my hands dirty in the name of the tiger.
After much persistence I finally got the go ahead from ZSL’s conservation Programme Manager, Sarah Christie, to volunteer on the tiger projects currently being deployed to prevent the tiger’s extinction in the wild.
I was fortunate to work alongside many different NGOs, including Fauna and Flora International (FFI), the Cambridge-based conservation organisation. The work funded by this charity, based in the Kerinci Seblat National Park - Sumatra, has played a vital role in reducing the effects of poaching for tiger skin and bones, as well as mitigating the issues faced with tiger conflict. The TPCU, Tiger Protection Conservation Unit, headed by Debbie Martyr, has been successful in taking several poachers to justice since its formation in 2000, with two separate successful operations during my time in Sumatra.
It is only once you are living the experience, you can really feel the magnitude of the plight the tiger faces and the poverty of the people living on the forest edge. The TPCU unit is simply sensational, it really is a well organised team, with efficiently structured patrols regularly staking out the forests for up to four days at a time, using just GPS to navigate its pre-arranged routes.
It is currently thought that the 1.4miliion Ha. National Park is fortunate to still host over 130 tigers and this is largely thanks to the critical work lead by Debbie and her team of 23 rangers.
But it isn’t just the poachers who are forcing the demise of this beautiful creature, illegal logging and deforestation are fast destroying the natural habitat, forcing the emergence of isolated pockets in which the cat is unable to breed or locate sufficient prey sources.
ZSL recognises this landscape issue and has been funding the ZSL Indonesia Programme since 2002, operating under the sponsorship of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and in close partnership with the Indonesian Department of Forestry (PHKA) and their local representatives (BKSDA). Projects include: Dangku Corporate Conservation Complex, Biodiversity and Oil Palm Project and the Berbak Carbon Value Initiative – REDD.
Berbak National Park is managed by the government, but as you can imagine it can be a significant strain on finances and therefore enforcement strategies are not always convincingly maintained. So if it were possible to make forests self-sustaining, then it becomes more appealing to protect them from the effects of deforestation.
The REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), discussed at the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen in 2009, promotes making carbon credits available for the West to buy, based on the value of trees in developing countries such as Sumatra.
Whilst at Berbak, the ZSL team was trying to ascertain a carbon baseline measurement for the swamp forest, where tigers still reside against all odds. This innovative approach to conservation is fast becoming an essential alternative to traditional methods, with Indonesia now being reported the third largest carbon emitter below USA and China, through deforestation. If we are able to increase the value of a living forest, convincing decision makers and the forest people living in the buffer zones, that all trees are worth more standing than cut down, then maybe our tigers will have a chance at survival in their natural habitats.
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