Monitoring Tigers : From Science to Politics

Krea Lecture Series – Biological Sciences

About the talk

With fewer than 4000 wild tigers, in 2010, the heads of 13 range countries committed to doubling tiger populations by 2022. Ideally, such goals should be based on ecologically realistic targets and timelines estimated from site-level data, not politically determined. First, through a series of cases, I highlight how important it is to apply a reliable monitoring design, understand the critical factors that have facilitated the recovery of tiger populations and the metrics that have allowed us to evaluate this recovery. Then, by assessing the purported recovery of tigers globally, I caution that the focus on counting “all tigers” to develop country and range-wide population estimates have distracted from reliably measuring trends in tiger numbers, which is more informative and relevant to conservation planning.

About the speaker

I am the Deputy Director of Panthera’s Tiger Program. I completed my doctoral research at the University of Kent, understanding the status of tigers and ecological and socio-economic correlates of their occurrence and persistence across the western Terai Arc Landscape, northern India. Since joining Panthera in 2015, I have been involved in standardizing population monitoring programs towards evaluating tiger recovery. I’ve also helped develop metrics to assess the effectiveness of conservation interventions implemented across Panthera’s tiger recovery sites. Additionally, I oversee conservation programs aimed at Panthera’s tiger recovery sites in south and southeast Asia.

Hosted by: Prof. John Mathew

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