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New Delhi (AFP) Nov 19, 2010 Efforts to save the tiger, set to be addressed at a conference in Russia next week, will depend in large part on the effectiveness of the shield India has tried to throw over the animal. The country is home to more than half of the world's rapidly dwindling wild tigers, but even its conservation programme, said by the government to be the world's most comprehensive, has failed to halt the creature's decline. In the land that inspired Rudyard Kipling's legendary Jungle Book stories -- featuring the cunning tiger protagonist Shere Khan -- authorities are in danger of losing their battle against poachers and other man-made problems. The picture is similar across the Asian region where one of nature's most revered hunters teeters on the brink of extinction. "Despite all the efforts, we are still facing challenges at various levels to end the poaching problem," said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in New Delhi last week. The tiger population in India has fallen to 1,411, from about 3,700 estimated to be alive in 2002 and the 40,000 estimated to be roaming across India at the time of independence from Britain in 1947. "Besides poaching, the tiger in India faces new threats -- the destruction of its habitat due to industrial expansion, mining projects and construction of dams near protected reserves," Ramesh added. The federal government in 2007 swung into action by setting up a new tiger protection force, chalked out some bold and urgent steps to end the poaching menace, and pledged to pump millions of dollars into the programme. Authorities are also moving villages out of reserve areas to secure natural habitat for the tigers and are transferring animals from one reserve to another in a bid to boost populations. A recent report by wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC said parts from 1,000 tigers slain by poachers across Asia have been seized over the past decade. "Tiger skins fetch anywhere around 11,000-21,000 US dollars and bones are sold for about 1,000 US dollars in China," said Rajesh Gopal, chairman of National Tiger Conservation Authority in New Delhi "There is a huge demand for these items in China and poachers take all the risk to make high profits." Across Asia, the tiger figures are alarming. According to 2009 International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List, there are 70 tigers in Bhutan, 10-50 in Cambodia, about 40 in China, 300 in Malaysia, 100 in Myanmar, 350 in Russia, more than 250 in Thailand and fewer than 100 in Vietnam. "There are just 3,200 tigers left across the world. This is a scary figure," Ramesh said last week ahead of the Global Tiger Summit in St Petersburg, which starts on Sunday. Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection of India, is sceptical about the agenda of the summit, which will seek to double the number of tigers by 2020. "It sounds very ambitious and positive that we will have 6,000 tigers in two decades, but tell me how will they do it without being able to save the existing ones?" Wright told AFP. "Patchy intelligence gathering techniques across Asia and lack of cross-border commitment to end the sale of tiger parts has led to a collective failure," she said. A major trafficking route begins in India and ends in China where tiger parts are highly prized as purported cures for a range of ailments and as aphrodisiacs. India's porous border with neighbouring Nepal, home to 121 Royal Bengal tigers, acts as a smuggling corridor for poachers, who bribe poor forest dwellers to guide them through the dense jungles. Earlier this year the Nepalese government pledged to double the number of tigers, but campaigners say the deeply impoverished country lacks the funding to carry through on the promise. In Bangladesh, another of India's neighbours, chief wildlife conservator Tapan Kumar Dey says tiger numbers have risen since 2004, when a United Nations-funded census found 440, but this is disputed by some observers. Dey said doubling the tiger population was impossible for Bangladesh. "The unique mangrove eco-system, a tiger habitat, cannot be expanded to encourage more tigers, plus there is not enough food -- largely spotted deer -- to sustain an increased tiger population," he said.
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