“Tigers will come back if we protect them”

MR Alan Rabinowitz, an American wildlife biologist who has set many milestones in his two decades working for the preservation of tigers and other wild cats around the world, achieved yet another hard-won goal on his most recent visit to Myanmar last month.

During an expedition to Kachin State that lasted from January 15 to 24, the 51-year-old conservationist helped the Myanmar government put the finishing touches on the establishment of the Northern Forest Complex, a 13,500-square-mile reserve that links four existing protected areas he helped create.

Those areas are Hkakabo Razi National Park, Hponkan Razi National Park, Bumphabum Wildlife Sanctuary and Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve, all established in northern Kachin State to protect a wide range of wildlife but especially to preserve tigers from extinction.

“Our best estimate is that there are about 150 tigers in the Hukawng Valley,” said Mr Rabinowitz, who is the director for science and exploration for the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society. “There are also tigers in Tanintharyi Division, and some in Htamathi [Sagaing Division] and other places around Myanmar, so we think there are maybe no more than 200 or 250 in the entire country.”

He said Hukawng Valley and Taninthayi Division are the only two areas in Myanmar with a good number of tigers because they are still wild and not easy to access.

“Malaria is a big problem in Hukawng Valley so not many people live there,” Mr Rabinowitz said.

He said that last month’s trip was one of the best he has had since he first came to Myanmar in 1993 to conduct wildlife surveys.

“I could already see people and things changing in the reserve. I saw less hunting. I saw no guns – which is good,” he said.

However, getting to that point was far from easy for Mr Rabinowitz and others who worked on establishing the protected areas, as the project has involved long negotiations with local villagers.

“One of the rules is that we cannot make the people who live there move out,” he said. “If we’re going to protect an area we must help the people and the wildlife.”

Hukawng Tiger Reserve includes five townships, one of which (Tanaing) is entirely within the boundaries of the protected area.

“It’s amazing!” he said. “A tiger reserve where the normal ways of life for the whole township are maintained. We’re taking a balanced approach . . . by asking locals how much land they use and how much they need.”

“Conservation cannot work unless local people feel good about what is happening around them,” he explained.

Making the reserves viable, however, has required local residents to change their behaviour in some areas, such as hunting.

Mr Rabinowitz explained that tigers are not endangered because people hunt them, but because locals have over-hunted large mammals that tigers rely on as a food source.

“Tigers need to kill big things to eat, so when locals kill all the sambar deer, wild pigs and barking deer, the tigers starve,” he said, adding that if they don’t have food, they don’t reproduce.

He said part of the conservation plan included differentiating development zones from wildlife corridors where it is illegal to cut trees or hunt.

“We’re trying to decrease hunting so sambar deer can come back to a good number,” Mr Rabinowitz said. “Once the population is high, the deer and pigs will start coming into the development zones, where they can be hunted by locals.”

The main problem is not those who kill wildlife in order to eat, but those who kill for commercial purposes. The situation has been made worse by the opening of gold mines in the area, as locals kill wildlife to sell to mineworkers.  

“We don’t have to stop the people who are killing wildlife in order to eat. What kills wildlife is commercialisation – commercial sale of wildlife,” Mr Rabinowitz said.

“But now it’s getting better,” he said. “The gold mines are almost finished, and the government plans to close them all by 2007.”

In the meantime, he said villagers are being taught to raise domestic wildlife as a food source.

“We’re bringing in pigs, and many of them have chickens already,” he said. “But they don’t know how to properly raise the chickens. They just let them run around in the forest.”

“Many people are starting to raise goats, which is something new. Goat meat is very good. And cows, but they don’t know how to take proper care of them, so we are going to provide training.”

Mr Rabinowitz pointed out that another thing that keeps people from hunting is education, reasoning that once children are educated, they do not want to stay in the forest anymore.

“They don’t want to live off slash-and-burn agriculture or hunting. They want to get a job working with computers in an office, which is good for conservation,” he said.

Mr Rabinowitz said that the government has been very helpful throughout the process of establishing the protected areas.

“The military inside the Hukawng Valley says they are protecting the wildlife corridors. No matter how much development there is, the wildlife will still have big forested corridors they can use to cross from one side to the other.”

He said the Hukawng Valley is the only protected area in Asia to have wildlife police.

“We have 50 policemen, real policemen, specifically called wildlife police who only work for the Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve. Their job is to stop the sale of wildlife meat in the markets,” he said. “And if anyone is caught killing a tiger, they are put in jail.”

With all this work behind him, Mr Rabinowitz said there is still more to be done to make sure the system is working.

“We’re putting up camera traps to document whether more wildlife are coming back into these areas, and to see if our efforts are working well,” he said. “We should see changes in the tiger population within three to five years.”

An added bonus is that the project should provide a huge boost to Myanmar’s tourism industry.

“The Hukawng Valley will be a perfect place for tourists: People can ride elephants, take boat trips on the rivers, and live with the local people,” he said.

In the midst of his work in Kachin State, Mr Rabinowitz has not forgotten Tanintharyi Division in the southernmost part of Myanmar. On his next visit to the country, he said, he will start working on establishing protected areas for tigers there as well.

“The tigers will come back if we protect them,” he said.

(This story was originally published by the print edition of The Myanmar Times, 5th-11th Feb 2006)

In a followup interview the next year, Dr Alan Rabinowitz said the outlook for the big cats in the far north of the country is improving.

“In the near future, it looks great for the Hukuang Valley,” said Dr Alan Rabinowitz, the director for science and exploration at the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

After years of involvement in conservation efforts, a delighted Dr Rabinowitz said last week in an exclusive interview with The Myanmar Times that “the future for tigers in the Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve is looking better than ever.”

Dr Rabinowitz first came to Myanmar in 1993 to conduct tiger surveys and last year he helped the Myanmar government put the finishing touches to the establishment of the Northern Forest Complex, a 13,500-square-mile reserve that links four protected areas.

They are the Hkakabo Razi National Park, Hponkam Razi National Park, Bumphabum Wildlife Sanctuary and the Hukuang Valley Tiger Reserve, which were established in the north of Sagaing Division and Kachin State to protect a variety of animals, including tigers.

Dr Rabinowitz said Myanmar had bigger wilderness areas and greater potential for an increase in the tiger population than other countries with similar conservation programs.

He said the Hukuang Valley had “maybe 100 tigers.” But the habitat, compared to tiger densities of protected areas in India, had the potential to support perhaps between 600 to 700 tigers.

“I think that over 10 years we have the potential to bring back 150 percent of the tigers, or 100 to 200 tigers,” he said.

Dr Rabinowitz said his optimism was based on several factors, including the progress achieved in efforts to educate those living within the protected areas about the importance of conservation, reports of an increase in tiger sightings and a reduction in hunting and the sale of bushmeat.

He also praised efforts to achieve a balance between development and conservation work, which he described as being essential to ensure the survival of the tigers.

“Even though there is more development and more clearing in the Hukuang Valley, there’s also more protection and more animals are returning, so there’s more balance now,” Dr Rabinowitz said.

He welcomed the determination of the government to keep the core area of the tiger reserve completely off limits to outsiders. “That’s a big thing because many people want to get in there.”

However, he expressed concern about gold mining in the Hukaung Valley, saying it was creating one of the biggest challenges to the conservation work.

As well as polluting waterways and posing a threat to human health through the use of mercury in the production process, the mining operations had contributed to a reduction in the wildlife which tigers ate.

This was because sambar, barking deer, wild pigs and other animals were being hunted to provide food for workers at the gold mines.

Dr Rabinowitz said he had seen as many gold mines in the valley as during a visit a year ago. This was despite government plans to shut them down by the start of 2007.

He said uncontrolled agricultural activities could also create challenges for tiger conservation efforts and referred to the allocation of nearly 200,000 acres each to two big companies to establish sugarcane and tapioca plantations.

To achieve a desirable balance between development and conservation, the best option was sustainable agricultural projects.

“The Hukuang Valley should have agricultural development … but it needs to be done right,” Dr Rabinowitz said.