Kommentar: If We Save The Tigers, We will Save The Planet
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post Saturday, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and World Wildlife Fund (Verdensnaturfonden)s President Carter Roberts write:
“A century ago, some 100.000 tigers roamed the wilderness across much of Asia. But 100 years of human overhunting of tigers’ prey, such as deer and wild pigs, and of poaching driven by demand for tigers’ skins and other body parts has been catastrophic. As few as 3.200 tigers remain, living in only 7 percent of their original natural habitat.
World leaders are gathering in St. Petersburg later this month for an unprecedented event: a tiger summit hosted by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Heads of government will seek to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022.
The 13 Asian countries that tigers call home have already agreed in principle to this goal. The 350 million US dollar, five-year Global Tiger Recovery Program these countries are proposing, will battle deforestation, poaching and the market for tiger parts. But there is one country outside Asia whose cooperation is crucial: the US.
The tiger is what conservationists call an “umbrella” species. By rescuing them, we save everything beneath their ecological umbrella, including the world’s last great forests, whose carbon storage mitigates (modvirker) climate change.
So if we protect tigers by stopping deforestation, we also salvage the carbon storage these forests provide.
The US has been a leader in tiger conservation, providing critical funding for anti-poaching efforts throughout Asia and using the threat of sanctions to persuade countries such as China and South Korea to ban tiger trade. But the upcoming summit will not succeed without US support – financial and political.
Wild tigers stand at a crossroads of extinction and survival. The “burning bright” eyes will be forever extinguished unless we act now”.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
