Vietnam has only 30 wild tigers. If we don’t take action now then their survival is very much in doubt. The world has around 3,200 wild tigers and they are facing increasing dangers - losing their living environment, being hunted illegally as well as the dangers of climate change.
The number of wild tigers in the Great Mekong Sub-region was previously high but today, only 350 tigers survive in this area, including around 30 in Vietnam. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) anticipates that by the year of tiger 2022, tigers will have disappeared in the Great Mekong Sub-region. Without tough measures, 2010 may be the last year of tiger that we can see wild tigers.
The year of tiger 2010 may be a landmark year for wild tigers in Vietnam. It is difficult to define accurately how many wild tigers are living in nature in Vietnam but all scientists agree that the community of wild tigers in Vietnam is seriously reducing in the last two decades. The latest picture of a wild tiger taken in Vietnam was 13 years ago, 1997 in the Pu Mat national park.
The World Bank has launched the “Global Tiger Initiative”, including a summit meeting on tigers in Kathmandu in 2009, a ministerial meeting about tigers in Hua Hin, Thailand in late January 2010 and the summit meeting of world leaders which will be held in at Vladivostock in September 2010, chaired by the WB Director Robert Zoellick and Russian PM Vladimir Putin.
Vietnam attended the ministerial meeting in Hua Hin, where attendants released the Hua Hin Declaration showing their agreement to make efforts to prevent the reduction of wild tigers and to improve the living environment of tigers.
To show this determination, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Vietnam suggests the following:
- Strictly control organizations that breed tigers in cages, trade tigers and products related to tigers because these acts seriously violate international and Vietnamese laws. According to the Environment Police Agency, there are 97 tigers being bred at private centres in Vietnam.
- Stop the use of tiger-related products – medicines or decorative items – and reconsider historical references for the use of products from tigers as medicines.
- Strictly manage wildlife trafficking via the northern and southern borders.
According to the WCS, each individual can also help preserve wild tigers to the next year of tiger by not using tiger-related products in any form and reporting to the authorities when they discover activities that harm tigers.