I recently interviewed a former employee of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who spent one year working in the forests of the Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve. His job was to do surveys on the tiger population.
"Basically there are no tigers left," he reports, "Especially not in the reserve."
Naturalist John Goodridge recently conducted an informal survey and came to the same conclusion. He said that although there were no tigers, the Hukaung valley remained an ideal habitat for them. There were hopes that the tigers might return.
Since then, the Wildlife Conservation Society has been trying to protect the reserve's bountiful wildlife from poachers. Enforcement is difficult. The Forests Department arrests poachers every day, but it lacks the resources to prosecute them.
There are no easy answers in the Hukaung Valley, home to several political powers including the Naga Army and the Kachin Independence Army. In the past few years, gold mining has come to dominate the local economy.
The gold mining and the accompanying population increase have been devastating to the local environment. The water quality is terrible, and ever greater numbers of poachers are turning to the local forests for food. The national government is also giving land grants to sprawling tapioca plantations. The agricultural companies must smooth the landscape with bulldozers before farming is possible.
There's a farcical nature to the efforts of the tiger reserve, even beyond the fact that there are no tigers. While the Forests Department fails to prosecute poachers it has in custody, the central government continues to grant mining and farming contracts which will exacerbate the problems. Outside the valley, there is little understanding of the challenges in the region. International funders demand that WCS conduct surveys to confirm what they already know.
A local environmental law student recently said to me that countries must reach a minimum level of development before they will even consider protecting the environment. In Myanmar, achieving that minimum level still seems like a distant dream.
Orion Martin '11 is currently volunteer teaching in Yangon, Myanmar.
Comments
Dear Mr Martin,
I disagree with the assumption that countries “must reach a certain level of development before they even consider protecting the environment”. The environment is likely to become degraded beyond repair well before such a level of development is reached.
Tigers are a case in point. Countries like Nepal and Bangladesh, with a GDP per capita comparable to that of Myanmar, still manage to protect some of their tigers, whereas in more developed countries such as China and Viet Nam, tigers (as well as most other wildlife) have been all but wiped out. The primary threat to tigers in South-East Asia is commercial poaching, which is not fueled by poverty in Myanmar, but primarily by the affluence of Chinese traders and consumers of tiger products.
It is very sad to learn that tigers in Hukaung valley are increasingly being poached. According to extensive camera-trap surveys (Lynam et al. 2003), Hukaung valley is one of only three areas in Myanmar where any tigers remain. Being a large area, it is doubtful that all tigers have been wiped out yet. Beyond tigers, the area is still rich in biodiversity and therefore holds tremendous value. I believe it is too early to abandon efforts to conserve such a precious place.
Best regards
Dear Mr. Krokar
It was not my intention to argue that the tiger preserve should be abandoned as useless. As you point out, there's plenty of other species being protected there, particularly endangered birds.
But I would argue that tigers are threatened, at least in part, by poverty. It's a lack of other livelihoods that encourages locals to turn to small game and tiger poaching. Poverty threatens tigers because the local government prioritizes economic growth rather than long term environmental stability. I saw a similar phenomenon in Northern Thailand, where local villages are clear cutting the forest to make charcoal, despite protests from local and national governments.
At the very least, recognizing poverty as a source of resource degradation can help us think about environmental protection programs that include low-impact livelihood development.
Orion