Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Thailand joined a special lecture, “Using science to inform conservation of the Amur tiger”, given by Dr. Dale Miquelle, a director of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Russia at Sanga Sabhasri Auditorium, 60th Anniversary Building, Faculty of Forestry, Kasetsart University on November 13, 2015.
Dale has been leading research and conservation efforts on the Siberian tiger since 1992. The program is the world’s longest running field research project on tigers. In addition, his efforts have focused on developing the next generation of tiger conservationists in the region, developing research, including training program for international students.
His talk is about using science for Amur tiger conservation in Russian Far East. By number of tiger is decreased because main prey (e.g. red deer, wild pig) abundance reduction due to hunting, habitat decline due to land encroachment and so on. Thus, the main reason for tiger decline is human activities. In order to recover Amur tiger population, therefore, using science is crucially required. In the first phase, radio telemetry was used to determine tiger home range size in Sikhote-Alin Mt. Found that female Amur tiger home range size is approximately 400 km2 while female Bengal tiger in India home range size is only 20 km2. One reason is tiger home range size is related to its prey abundance in the area. Moreover, they established “Tiger response team” for area where the tiger human conflict exists to mitigate and reduce the problems, especially, to protect tiger from local people killing.
In the end, Dale concluded that Amur tiger population could be recovered if number of its prey is increased, tiger habitat is expanded, law enforcement is strengthened and cooperation between national and international agencies along the boundary is required.