Tiger Conservation Conference 2024

Blog Credit: Trupti Thakur

Image Courtesy: Google

Tiger Conservation Conference 2024 By Bhutan

Bhutan is hosting the Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference on Earth Day 2024 to mobilize $1 billion in new funding over the next decade for the preservation of tiger landscapes across Asia. These landscapes are crucial for maintaining biodiversity, sequestering carbon, supporting over 100 million people, and ensuring the overall health of the planet.

 

The Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference is being held in Bhutan under the patronage of Her Majesty The Queen, Jetsun Pema Wangchuck. The two-day summit brings tiger range countries together with visionary private and public sector donors, international development agencies, and tiger conservation NGOs, including WCS, to discuss new and innovative funding streams for landscape scale tiger conservation.

  

Conference Details

• The two-day conference is being hosted under the patronage of Bhutan’s Queen, Jetsun Pema Wangchuck.
• It is co-organized by the Royal Government of Bhutan and the Tiger Conservation Coalition.
• The conference will include expert panels on sustainable finance, linkages with the UN’s Global Biodiversity Framework, and the role of public-private partnerships in safeguarding tiger landscapes.

 

Importance of Tiger Conservation

• The tiger is the largest felid and an apex predator, playing a significant role in the structure and function of ecosystems.
• Tigers are a “landscape” species, requiring large areas with diverse habitats, free from human disturbance and rich in prey.
• Landscapes with wild tigers are healthy and vibrant ecosystems, critically important in a climate-changing world.

 

Global Tiger Population

• In the last year, The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced that the global tiger population had stabilized and potentially increased.
• Data suggested a potential 40% increase in tiger numbers, from 3,200 in 2015 to 4,500 in 2022, despite extreme threats.
• This represented the first potential climb in the species’ numbers in decades.

 

The status of tiger conservation in India

India has made significant strides in tiger conservation, with the latest figures showing an increase in their numbers.

• Tiger population rose to 3,167 in 2022, up from 2,967 in 2018
• India hosts around 75% of the global tiger population
• Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of tigers
• Project Tiger, launched in 1973, has played a crucial role
• Challenges include habitat loss, poaching, and human-animal conflicts

 

Key Facts:

• The Global Environment Facility has provided more than $197 million in financing and mobilized another $880 million in co-finance for tiger conservation since 2010.
• Tiger range countries and the conservation community have made extraordinary progress in protecting the species in recent years, with several populations witnessing upward trajectories in numbers.
• The coming together of inspired minds from diverse public and private sectors is essential to strategically identify how a long-term future for the tiger is financially possible.

The Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference 2024 in Bhutan is a significant step towards mobilizing the necessary funds for the long-term conservation of tigers and their habitats across Asia.

 

“Tigers are recovering but this success is fragile,” said WCS’s Joe Walston, Executive Vice President of WCS Global. “They remain vulnerable to poaching, illegal trade, and loss of prey and habitat. The Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference in Bhutan, with the goal of mobilizing $1 billion over ten years to preserve tiger landscapes, will be key to ensuring continued success for tigers and the people and all the other wildlife that rely on these ecosystems.”

THIS EARTH DAY SIGNALS A NEW HOPE FOR TIGER RECOVERY

“A forest with tigers is a sign of a healthy planet,” writes WCS’s John Calvelli for PBS Nature, “with benefits for not just wildlife, but the people who rely on those forests for natural resources, clean air, clean water, as well as the sequestering of carbon and mitigating the impacts of climate change.”

 

 

 

Blog By: Trupti Thakur