Snow and grit – with a dash of hope – on Day One
By Jamie Kemsey
WWF-International Tiger Team
Tomorrow, this tiger might not be so lucky. Human-tiger conflict had already led to the death of an Amur tiger last week, and the pressures on tiger habitat in this wide expanse of wood and water on the edge of a vast continent will only heighten in the future.
An Amur tiger faces another snowy day of uncertainty (c) David Lawson/WWF-UK
But today there was hope. Not only for the Amur tiger, but for the other five sub-species found throughout Asia. The International Tiger Forum opened in this stately palace with an arctic blast of Northern Russian clarity: we have done the hard work of planning, meeting, drafting. The Global Tiger Recovery Programme stands ready. There is will and there is purpose. We are ripe for action. And action – swift, certain and unvarnished – is the now the only response to saving the wild tiger from extinction.
Truth be known, these conferences are not lightning rods of pomp and flash. They are long speeches and firm handshakes, where getting real is real, and the unglamorous work of hammering out foundations and structures, building skeletons bone by bone, rules the day. But they can be inspiring, and a morning speech by WWF Director General Jim Leape brought it all home for me, when he concluded that we all share the dream of not only saving tigers, but increasing their numbers over the next 12 years, before the next Year of the Tiger in 2022. It is now time to make this dream real.
Each one of the 13 countries that have tigers presented their national plans, showcasing the huge amount of effort they have put in to stepping up and taking responsibility for their tiger populations. And pledges for action appeared: India promising one billion dollars over the next ten years to protect their parks and areas where tigers live, Cambodia promising to minimize human disturbance in its tiger areas, Malaysia pledging to buy back some of its forests from commercial concessions so tigers will have improved habitat for the future.
It was, though, just a beginning, the advance winds before the storm. In the next two days we will need more pledges, an enthusiastic and adamantine adoption of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme, and more countries and their partners, like WWF, to stand stout and say, “yes, we have a plan, here is how we are going to implement it, and we will be starting tomorrow.”
The Amur tiger waking from its snowy slumber, after all, may not have another day negotiating the complex threats of determined poachers, habitat encroachment and loss, and lack of suitable prey. Tigers everywhere face these minefields of human progress and greed, and their permanent disappearance embodies more than the mere loss of Asia’s top predator. It will be a black mark on our species’ soul, a loss forever of the spirit of the wild from which we evolved, and still cling to, tenuously, today.
On the bus on the way home, a Russian colleague told me the story of the siege of St. Petersburg during World War II. The city was surrounded by enemy troops for over a year, completely cut off from food supplies and the outside world. Many perished, but many more survived, rebuilding the city into the dynamic center of culture and community it is today. It rose from abyss stronger, unbowed and proud. Can the tiger rise again? In this most stately, beautiful and tenacious city, can we save the most stately, beautiful and tenacious of our icons of the untamed world and its wonder? With the first day’s soft snow and quiet but burgeoning storm, I have adopted this city’s strong, driven ethic of survival, hope unbowed.
