#poaching

When the turquoise dwarf gecko became a focus of the illegal pet trade, it's estimated that over 15% of the wild population was removed in just five years.

Scientists worked to get the species designated as critically endangered and then to get it CITES protection to ban international trade. During that same time, captive breeding helped to stem the demand for wild-caught geckos and their price dropped from over $1,000 a gecko to less than $50.

Camera-trapping data revealed in a new study show a steady recovery of tigers in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex over the past two decades.

The tiger recovery has been mirrored by a simultaneous increase in the numbers of the tigers’ prey animals, such as sambar deer and types of wild cattle.

The authors attribute the recovery of the tigers and their prey to long-term efforts to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to restore key habitats and water sources.

Experts say the lessons learnt can be applied to support tiger recovery in other parts of Thailand and underscore the importance of the core WEFCOM population as a vital source of tigers repopulating adjacent landscapes.

The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data.

Thailand is the final stronghold of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), the subspecies having been extirpated from neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over the past decade due to poaching, habitat loss and indiscriminate snaring...

Fewer than 200 tigers are thought to remain in Thailand’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, only a handful of which are sufficiently undisturbed and well-protected to preserve breeding tigers. 

The most important of these protected areas for tigers is the Huai Kha Khaeng Thung Yai (HKK-TY) UNESCO World Heritage Site, which comprises three distinct reserves out of the 17 that make up Thailand’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM). Together, these three reserves — Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thungyai Naresuan West and Thungyai Naresuan East — account for more than a third of the entire WEFCOM landscape.

Now, a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation documents a steady recovery of tigers within the HKK-TY reserves since camera trap surveys began in 2007. The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007.

Healthy tiger families  

The study findings reveal that the tiger population grew on average 4% per year in Hua Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest and longest-protected of the reserves, corresponding to an increase in tiger density from 1.3 tigers per 100 square kilometers, to 2.9 tigers/100 km2. 

“Tiger recoveries in Southeast Asia are few, and examples such as these highlight that recoveries can be supported outside of South Asia, where most of the good news [about tigers] appears to come from,” said Abishek Harihar, tiger program director for Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization, who was not involved in the study.

Among the camera trap footage gathered in HKK-TY over the years were encouraging scenes of healthy tiger families, including one instance of a mother tiger and her three grownup cubs lapping water and lounging in a jacuzzi-sized watering hole. The tiger family stayed by the water source for five days during the height of the dry season.

The team of researchers from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Kasetsart University, and India’s Center for Wildlife Studies deployed camera traps at more than 270 separate locations throughout the HKK-TY reserves, amassing 98,305 days’ worth of camera-trap data over the 19-year study period.

Using software that identifies individual tigers by their unique stripe patterns, they built a reference database of all known tigers frequenting the three reserves. A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year [over the course of the study].

Ten of the tigers were photographed in more than one of the reserves, indicating their territories straddled the reserve boundaries. The authors conclude that each of the three reserves has a solid breeding tiger population and that, taken together, the HKK-TY landscape is a vital source of tigers that could potentially repopulate surrounding areas where they’ve been lost. This is supported by cases of known HKK-TY tigers dispersing into neighboring parts of WEFCOM and even across the border into Myanmar.

Conservation efforts pay off

Anak Pattanavibool, study co-author and Thailand country director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay that population models that take into account the full extent of suitable habitat available to tigers within the reserves and the likelihood that some tigers inevitably go undetected by camera surveys indicate there could be up to 140 tigers within the HKK-YT landscape.

Anak told Mongabay the tiger recovery is a clear indication that conservation efforts are starting to pay off. In particular, long-term action to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to boost the tigers’ prey populations seem to be working, he said.

“Conservation success takes time. At the beginning we didn’t have much confidence that it would be possible [to recover tiger numbers], but we’ve been patient,” Anak said. For him, the turning point came in 2012, when authorities arrested and — with the aid of tiger stripe recognition software — prosecuted several tiger-poaching gangs operating in Huai Kha Khaeng. “These cases sent a strong message to poaching gangs and they stopped coming to these forests,” he said."

...ranger teams have detected no tiger poaching in the HKK-TY part of WEFCOM since 2013.

The new @atavist story is about an undercover agent who posed as a taxidermist to bust Colorado's worst poachers.

As the Colorado Division of Wildlife saw it, by the mid-1980s the San Luis Valley had become a lawless backcountry where hunters traded poached wildlife for goods and services, to pay off gambling debts, or to obtain cocaine and marijuana.

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1. How Indigenous Australians are restoring Earth’s largest organism

“After a devastating heat wave hit the world’s largest plant, a radical restoration effort emerged[.… Dugongs] avoid [grazing] where sea cucumbers sit because they find them unpalatable[… and as] bottom feeders, [sea cucumbers] turn over the sediment and recycle nutrients[…. Now,] Indigenous divers [are] planting seagrass by hand and helping build a sea cucumber fishery designed to sustain the restoration.”

2. Energy Bills Relief Act Would Lower Household Energy Costs, Expand Clean Energy Access, Strengthen Grid Reliability

“The legislation would restore and expand programs that help households reduce energy consumption, install and access clean energy, and provide energy assistance to millions of families[…,] restore clean energy tax credits for households and small businesses and protect local clean energy projects from being blocked by federal overreach[…, and] strengthen energy infrastructure and modernize grid technologies to improve reliability and reduce costs for consumers.”

3. Forty years after the last one was poached, rhinos are back in the wild in Uganda

“For the first time in more than four decades, rhinos have returned to Uganda's Kidepo Valley National Park, where poachers once wiped them out for their horns and meat. On Tuesday, two southern white rhinos became the first of eight animals intended to re-establish a population in […] a secure rhino sanctuary outfitted with perimeter fencing, […] and monitoring technology was in place to ensure the animals are effectively protected and managed.”

4. Protecting nature to safeguard Saint John’s water supply

“More than 4,800 hectares (11,860 acres) of city-owned land […] have received special conservation status[….] While these lands and waters are not managed primarily for conservation, they provide long-term benefits for biodiversity similar to protected areas. By protecting healthy forests and wetlands, this project safeguards water quality and quantity, reduces water treatment costs through natural filtration, supports overall ecosystem health and lowers public health risks.”

5. EU court orders states to recognise trans citizens’ gender in landmark ruling

“A major EU court has ruled that member states cannot refuse to amend gender data when it interferes with free movement rights[….] It sets a legal precedent that recognising a trans person’s gender identity is a fundamental right within the EU, and member states must abide by this under their human rights obligations. Judges also said the ruling nullifies any Supreme Court judgment that restricts legal gender recognition in any respective member state[….]”

Colorado’s San Luis Valley was a wildlife poacher’s paradise. Then an undercover federal agent arrived, posing as a taxidermist and ready to take down the valley’s worst offenders. 

Issue no. 174, “Big Game,” is now available:

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