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[Dr Panthera]

(03-11-2016, 07:51 AM)Shardul Wrote: http://projecttiger.nic.in/WriteReadData...115212.pdf

Clearly mentions it's greater than 1.5 years, not 1 year. So only subadults and matures are counted, not cubs.

<1000 out of 2200 means almost 60% of Indian tigers are sub adults? While in case of malaysia, it is only 150 out of 450, i.e 33%? Why is that?

These so called Western "experts" and their predictions make me laugh. 20 years ago they would say how Thailand or Indonesia were the "future" of tigers, now it is Malaysia.

When Dr. Ulhas karanth gives his opinion about tigers in India, I take him seriously because:

1) He has spent his entire life studying tigers in India and their habitat. He has seen hundreds of tigers and knows the landscape inside out.
2) When he doubts the Indian government's census data, he gives very good reasons as to why he is doubting, and also gives alternative solutions. 
3) He doesn't go around making bombastic claims over the future of Grizzly bears in US for eg, because he has never studied them. He only talks about species (i.e the Bengal tiger) that he knows and has studied over years. In actual field conditions, which is what matters the most.
4) He is balanced in his opinions, not overly critical or extreme.


Now coming to the 2 ifs:

If Poaching is controlled
If prey numbers are increased

Sounds so easy, doesn't it? Well if it was, then most countries wouldn't struggle so much with protecting their wildlife. The demand for wildlife products isn't going down and Poachers are very smart nowadays, they know more about the animals and their habitat than most researchers, and it takes more than just commitment to stop them. Just look at what is happening to Rhinos in Kruger National Park, despite the forest rangers there operating some of the most advanced equipment available.

I agree Malaysia still has large tracts of intact forests, but we need to ask why did the population of tigers and their prey fall to so low in the first place. Was it just hunting or were there other reasons? Can the forests there support high density of ungulates? What do the  There would be many such questions. Animals that occur at low densities in their home range are usually the toughest to save, and first to go extinct.

Most people don't realize that India also has a lot forested tracts, but a lot of it is fragmented, some of it is degraded, some have very little wildlife and some are completely devoid of any. Only a portion of it is suitable for tigers, and that too if managed properly. So there are a lot of factors at play.

Oh, and Muntjac are not tiger's prey item, they are too small and even if Malayan tigers did prey on them, it would be because of lack of large ungulates.

I am not attacking anyone here, but I feel that the discussions should move beyond the obvious copy pasting of information available on the internet. Don't just state the obvious, try to offer some real insight.

India was and will always be the most important country in tiger range and excellent measures have been in place since the early 70's, the highest ungulate concentration in Asia is in the sub-Himalayan Terai arc in Nepal and Northern India and in the Indian Western Ghats so the highest concentrations of tigers are there and protecting them is paramount for tiger conservation.
South East Asian forests do not support more than 2 to 3 tigers per 100 KM2 less than  the Indian sub-continent, we still need to allocate research and conservation effort for tigers everywhere they exist.There is a lot of work to do everywhere.
As far as I know not a single western scientist has stated that Thailand or Malaysia or Indonesia is the future of tigers, Can you name one? And from publication? To ignore India and highlight smaller populations is like saying Tanzania is not important to lion protection and more effort should be allocated to Cameroon??!!!!???!!
The tiger demographic classification 0-1 year small cubs, 1-2 large cubs, 2-4 years sub-adult : 18 months so the census does include some large cubs ...cubs and sub-adults form close to 55-60% of large cats so tigers 1.5 to 4 years old is a substantial number, the IUCN number is for adult P.t.jacksoni,  breeding adults is what matters and if it is 1000-1200-1500  over a large country like India that is still very low...many of them are in isolated protected areas surrounded by millions of people so the risk of population fragmentation and inbreeding can not be underestimated.
Muntjac reported as tiger prey in Kawanishi (2003) Rabinowitz (1987) Smicharoen (2004) and Petdee (2005) the decline of sambar and the extinction of Eld's deer is pushing tigers to prey on Muntjac.

I by the way never quote popular media and internet everything I quote is from my 100 plus scientific books about carnivores, peer-reviewed studies, and data provided by international agencies like IUCN, the Cat Specialist Group, and Panthera.org And my own research and observation on the feeding ecology of lions in Kenya and Tanzania (in progress will publish in 2017 hopefully ).
To finish I hope the world would have more scientists as brilliant as Dr.Karanth his life work has enriched our knowledge of this great animal and I hope he will be renowned by naming the next Tiger Reserve in his honor, incidentally he underestimated the Sundarban density as low as 0.6 tigers/100 Km2 , a number corrected since by Barlow, Khan, and Mukherjee by successive studies with more accurate methods, but it was his work that showed that ridiculous estimates like 1500 tigers in the Sundarbans or 100,000 tigers a hundred years ago are put to scrutiny. Reply