The Fund for the Tiger
Annual Year End Newsletter
How You Can Help
December, 2000
Dear Online Friends:
As Chairman of The Fund For The Tiger I would like to take this opportunity
to wish all of our friends and supporters a joyous Holiday
Season. As we complete our fifth year in operation and I am
pleased to be able to send out this brief year end report on the
projects we are supporting in Asia now and into the year 2001.
India
The Fund continues to support
various projects being conducted by the Wildlife Protection
Society of India [WPSI] headed
by Belinda Wright. Funds committed into the year 2001 will assist
the following efforts.
- Perhaps the most important
project that we have helped fund over the past five years
is their Tiger Poaching and Trade investigation project.
Using a widespread network of informants and undercover
work, intelligence is gathered to locate poachers and
wildlife criminals who trade in tiger parts and other
endangered species. As our Summer Newsletter showed,
there is now a renewed and ominous market for tiger
skins, particularly in the Middle East, and in the Far
East via the porous smuggling routes of Nepal and Tibet.
The WPSI is working closely with the Indian Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In 2000 the WPSI assisted
in 17 successful raids resulting in 34 arrests of people
now facing charges for crimes under the Wildlife
Protection Act of India.
- Our support for
anti-poaching patrols at Corbett National Park continue.
Funds are used for fuel and maintenance of vehicles used
in anti-poaching patrols by the Kalagarh Forest Division
and for the patrols led by Brijendra Singh within the
forest.
- We continue to support and
sustain Sonakali, the elephant we helped donate to
Sonanadi Sanctuary. Food and supplies for her and her
mahout as well as a proper shed and a protective
enclosure come from our funding. Sonakali’s
importance to this pristine forest is most apparent
during the summer months when the monsoon rains make foot
and vehicular patrols impossible. Sonakali not only
continues anti-poaching patrols but helps transport
supplies to forest guard camps within the forest.
- Legal support at
Ranthambhore National Park to prosecute poaching
incidents. There are five cases pending at the moment
relating to tiger and leopard bones and skins, some
involving well known wildlife criminals.
- An exciting new project is
underway at Bandhavgarh National Park and I am pleased
that we are making a commitment to help. For years we
have wanted to be able to help protect the tigers there
but it has been difficult to find the right approach. In
January of 2001, the WPSI, with support from the local
Field Director, is holding an anti-poaching wildlife
enforcement workshop at Bandhavgarh. We have agreed to
help fund this workshop. This is an excellent opportunity
to establish an effective and sustainable anti-poaching
program which we would be pleased to assist in the
future. As I have written many times, the tigers,
particularly in the core area, are flourishing, but need
protection and monitoring as they reach the critical
dispersal age when they are most vulnerable to poaching.
Nepal
In Nepal, our funding for the
projects listed below go via the International Trust for Nature
Conservation in Kathmandu and its Trustee, the internationally
recognized tiger expert, Dr. Charles McDougal. McDougal works
with the Director General of the Nepal’s Department of
National Parks and Wildlife Conservation to help sustain these
tiger conservation efforts. In October, I was in Nepal leading a
trek and was able to meet with McDougal to discuss the following
commitments into 2001.
- We will continue to fund
an anti-poaching unit at Royal Sukla Phanta National Park
and at Parsa Wildlife Reserve. Until three years ago
there were no patrols at either Sukla Phanta or Parsa.
- The Fund For
The Tiger has assisted in all tiger habitat surveys in
Nepal over the past four years and we will continue to
support those co-ordinated by McDougal and his staff of
tiger trackers. These surveys have taken on a new format
co-ordinated throughout Nepal. The emphasis is on camera
traps supplemented with foot patrols. In October I
brought one camera-trap unit to Nepal and we have now
purchased another. I seems that a camera-shy tigress
ripped one off a tree and destroyed it.
- The most exciting new
project we are funding in Nepal is the mobile
anti-poaching patrol run by Tika Ram Adhikari at Chitwan
National Park. Tika Ram is a former Deputy Warden at
Chitwan. I first met Tika Ram at Chitwan in 1993. A visit
to the local jail in Bharatpur to interview poachers with
him and McDougal inspired me to get involved in tiger
conservation. His new work is already netting impressive
results. A recent raid arrested several poachers
including a well know ‘businessman’ from
Kathmandu who is now languishing in the Bharatpur jail.
One interesting note underscores the pressures being felt
by national parks in Nepal and elsewhere and the
importance of anti-poaching work on their periphery.
Bharatpur is a small town adjacent to the
‘protected’ forests of Chitwan. Of the 66
prisoners in the Bharatpur jail, 45 are there on wildlife
poaching offenses..
Odds
and Ends
The Fund For The
Tiger web
site now contains all of our Newsletters and other relevant
information at: http://www.channel1.com/users/hemlock/tigerfund
Tigers and other endangered
species continue to live a precarious existence. The belief in
the efficacy of animal products for traditional medicine remains
very strong in Asia. In August of this year I led a trek in
Tibet. In the lobby of my hotel in Tsetang was a display case
with brochures from the China Tibet Pharmaceutical Factory
advertising medicines made from rhino horn, musk deer, and bear
gall bladder to treat everything from indigestion, liver
diseases, to ‘calming the body and mind’ to
‘increase circulation’ and ‘invigorate vital
energy’.
There have been some news
articles recently touting the comeback of the tiger from the
brink of extinction. This is good news for all who care about the
tiger and worthy of cautious optimism and hope. It proves that if
left alone with enough land and food, tigers will survive. What
cannot be allowed to happen is the apathy and complacency which
plagued the international conservation community in the
1980’s.
How
to Help
We have increased our commitments for the next
year in support of some important new tiger conservation efforts
at Bandhavgarh and Chitwan. If you can help in any way please
send your contribution to The
Fund For The Tiger at P. O.
Box 2, Woodacre, California, 94973. Contributions are deductible
for tax purposes within the limits of the law.
Warm regards and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!.
Sincerely,
Brian K. Weirum
Chairman
The Fund
For The Tiger
Page last updated December 19, 2000
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