Talking Not Good Enough for Tigers
In the waning moments of the Year of the Tiger officials and celebrities from around the world gathered in St. Petersburg for the first-ever Global Tiger Summit Nov. 21-24. Vladimir Putin was there. World Bank President Bob Zoellick was there. Leonardo DiCaprio was delayed, but sent a million bucks anyway. Naomi Campbell made it.
Everyone knows the tiger is in decline. NGOs have been telling us that for years, using the big cat to ask for funds, promising to stop the hemmorhage even though very few NGOs have much to do with law enforcement. Everyone agrees law enforcement is key. “It’s our number one priority,” Zoellick told me during a launch party for this week’s event in 2008. An astounding 2.5 years ago, many of the same officials as in St. Petersburg this week met at the National Zoo in Washington, DC to “reverse decline in tiger numbers.” Harrison Ford was there that year. Bo Derek was there. Robert Duvall was there. So many reporters attended the event you couldn’t get near the speakers, who sat at a table in front of the zoo’s tiger exhibit.
After their speeches, zoo staff brought out buckets of frozen blood for the tigers to play with. Except for me and some staff nobody stayed to watch. Nobody had time for the live tigers. The meeting broke for lunch and was supposed to reconvene at the World Bank that afternoon, but hardly anyone outside of the NGO world bothered with the second meeting. Zoellick was not there. The movie stars were gone. No reporters showed up. Expert after expert talked about declines, about cornerstone species, keystone species, umbrella species. The need for “tiger landscapes” and how protecting the tiger helps every species in its range. But then a senior World Bank official, contravening his boss, told the room the World Bank could not legally fund law enforcement. A few months later I traveled to Sumatra where a wildlife trader there said to me, “You want to protect the tiger? Let one go in your neighborhood and see who will protect it. If you want to protect the tiger you must give me a reason to save it.”
This month’s Tiger Summit has resulted in endorsement of a Global Tiger Recovery Program whose goal includes doubling the number of wild tigers by 2022. Without concrete benchmarks, that goal is fluff. Still, at the rate the group is going it should not be difficult to double the tiger population. In 2008 the group estimated the wild tiger population to be “around 4000.” This year they’re saying “about 3200.” The numbers get smaller every meeting. Keep that in mind because leaders this week could not decide how to parcel out the money, so they’ve agreed to four more meetings next year…
Wildlife trafficking may be the only area of major crime in the world where we let non-governmental organizations, individuals, and celebrities set international policy, funding, and enforcement priorities. It’s one thing if this were a supplement to existing law enforcement, but with few exceptions it’s not.
Here’s some good tiger summit coverage…and here.
BC
Tags: GEF, global tiger summit, Harrison Ford, Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell, Putin, Robert Zoellick, smuggling, tiger, tiger conservation initiative, wildlife trade, World Bank
November 27th, 2010 at 5:43 am
You would think that the number of PhD’s and ‘experts’ attending the summit would have come up with a tentative plan to distribute the funds, sent the plan to the governments before the summit, and is agreed at the summit. Instead, 4 more meetings will be held to discuss how to distribute the funds. Let’s see – one meeting averages US1.5 million in costs, so 4 meetings will come up to US6 million. Is it just me or shouldn’t this money be better spent on paying better salaries to dedicated rangers, purchase high tech tools and vehicles (just like what those poachers have!) to improve communication and transportation, hire more officers, etc. US6m goes a long way in say, Laos, where the last I heard they only have a handful of people on enforcement. Now, the tigers have to wait for another year for bureaucrats to decide how the distribute the funds. I am sure there’s many examples of a multi-country funding mechanism globally which have worked, and for the countries at the summit to adopt or adapt. Surely the tiger cannot wait for 4 more meetings to double their population. Apart from the poachers profiting from the tigers, the 5 star hotels, tourist spots and not forgetting, daily allowances of those attending these meetings are also making a killing from the rapid demise of the tiger.