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TIGER INITIATIVE EFFORTS
Not only is protecting source sites pragmatic and efficient, Walston and his colleagues argue, it's also financially feasible. Protection would cost $82 million a year, they estimate, including increased law enforcement and surveillance to stop poachers, monitor tigers and their prey, and work with local communities. Decades of evidence shows that focusing on these simple interventions allows tigers to recover, Walston says. Range states already underwrite most of these costs.
The rest--$35 million--the authors hope to raise through initiatives that come out of the much-anticipated Tiger Summit, planned for November 20-24 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Sponsored by the Global Tiger Initiative, an international alliance dedicated to preventing the extinction of wild tigers, the summit will convene government leaders from 13 range states.
Having all the leaders of countries with tigers in one place offers an unprecedented opportunity to muster the political will to save tigers. When governments have decided that tiger conservation is a genuine priority, and invest the time, effort, and political will to protect tigers and their prey, says Walston, they can reverse the decline. "Eventually, we can build up tiger landscapes from source sites. The more robust the population, the more it's able to resist poaching and other threats.