The International Tiger Conservation Forum (Tiger Summit), hosted by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, begins on November 21st in St. Petersburg. The Summit will be in session through November 24, 2010.
The WildCat Conservation Legal Aid Society is being represented at the Summit by Philip J. Nyhus, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Colby College.
Dr. Nyhus is one of the distinguished editors of Tigers of the World: The Biology, Politics, and Conservation of Panthera tigris (2nd edition) and a contributing author to The Journal of the WildCat Conservation Legal Aid Society. He has over twenty years of extensive experience working in Asia, including China and Indonesia on tiger conservation, human-wildlife conflict, the human dimension of large mammal conservation, GIS, interdisciplinary approaches to wildlife risk assessment, and environmental policy.
The Summit is expected to be attended by the heads of governments from the 13 states who have tiger populations in their regions which will allow not only for the raising of the necessary finances for national tiger conservation plans, but also the integration of these schemes into social and economic development programs. The goal is to endorse the St. Petersburg Declaration on Tiger Conservation and the Global Tiger Recovery Program.
Over 450 tigers, or 11% of the global population, live in Russia. Global tiger populations dwindled from 100,000 to 4,000 in the past century, with some subspecies becoming extinct. Bangladesh, Bhutan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, and Thailand have wild tiger populations. North Korea claims to have tigers in the wild, but the current status of the big cat there is unknown.
Declaration Tiger Conservation, Negotiated Draft, July 14, 2010
Global Tiger Recovery Program, November 4, 2010
U.S. House Resolution - Tiger Summit
IUCN Council Tiger Declaration
EIA Report: Enforcement Not Extinction
TRAFFIC Report: The Big Cat Trade in Myanmar and Thailand
TRAFFIC Report: Reduced to Skin & Bones: An Analysis of Tiger Seizures from 11 Tiger Range Countries (2000-2010)
Links to the latest international news headlines on the Summit are available on Year of the Tiger!
WildCat Conservation Legal Aid Society © All rights reserved