Tiger recovery across TraMCA landscape 

The Transboundary Manas Conservation Area (TraMCA) is a biodiversity-rich region with a mosaic of conservation areas stretching from India’s Ripu-Chirang reserve forest in the west to Bhutan’s Jomotshangkha Wildlife Sanctuary in the east. TraMCA is home to tigers (Panthera tigris), elephants (Elephas maximus), greater one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis), and other smaller species such as the endangered pygmy hog (Porcula salvania). It encompasses two of the four ecoregions in the Eastern Himalayas under the WWF Global 200 Ecoregions: the Terai-Duar Savannas and Grasslands, and the Eastern Himalayan broadleaf and conifer forests, which provide vital ecosystem services for the people and wildlife of this region.  

While TraMCA is increasingly acknowledged as a hotspot for biological diversity and applauded for its efforts to conserve tigers and other flagship species, challenges to the ecological integrity of the landscape are profound of which the most prominent is the illegal offtake of timber and wildlife, coupled with infrastructure development and impacts of climate change. The increasing demands for wildlife products and forest resources, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict are some of the prime threats facing this area.  

Limited by inadequate staff and the porous border, rangers of both countries are unable to effectively monitor the area. To address these challenges there is a need for more collaborative management and monitoring between the two countries, including engagement of communities and civil society organizations. Rapid protected area management assessments conducted by WWF for most of these sites found community engagement to be the most significant and prevalent gap for all sites, followed by protection and staff capacity. 

Interventions should: 

a) offset the high cost of conservation success being borne by local communities (access restriction to natural resources, cost of negative impact of human wildlife interactions, foreclosure of future land use options, etc.) to strengthen and sustain active support of local communities for conservation initiatives; and  

b) provide alternate economic opportunities to reduce direct dependency on natural resources and promote income generation activities to enable access to suitable alternative markets.  

For tigers to thrive, they require a supportive local community, effective protection from poaching, safe places to breed, a plentiful supply of prey, and minimal human-tiger conflict. These critical elements of tiger site management are now codified by the Conservation Assured | Tiger Standards (CA|TS). CA|TS provides a set of criteria that allows tiger site managers to determine whether their management practices will lead to successful tiger conservation. CA|TS was developed by WWF in partnership with dozens of tigers and protected-area experts and is managed via a partnership (a collective representation of tiger range governments, inter-governmental agencies, institutions, NGOs, and conservation areas).  

WWF-Bhutan has worked with the Department of Forests and Parks Services and local communities to strengthen management interventions in the TraMCA Landscape to improve tiger habitats, including assisting RMNP, PWS, and JWS with scientific monitoring, initiating transboundary cooperation, and applying SMART technology.  

WWF also assisted the Department of Forests and Parks Services to establish the Bhutan Tiger Center to conserve big cats in RMNP in 2017. In 2019 RMNP became a CA|TS Approved site and achieved full roll out of SMART and the real time SMART CONNECT.  

The SMART suite of tools has markedly improved the effectiveness of wildlife protection teams’ response to poaching and other illegal activities based on informed decisions and resulted in the steady increase of target wildlife population in RMNP and beyond.  

The Hunter to Hermit Program, which was implemented in 2017-2018 in Norbugang village in RMNP and aimed at engaging hunters to follow alternative livelihoods, has been successful. Some of the hunters who have vowed to cease hunting are now managing wildlife habitats and have taken up farming as an alternate livelihood. The program has successfully led to 35 hunters changing their practices to managing wildlife habitats, taking up farming as an alternate livelihood, or committing to serving the local monastery. 

This project will build on these concerted efforts to improve management and protection in the TraMCA landscape through inclusive conservation actions, including involving the local communities in wildlife conservation, and strengthening management effectiveness using CA|TS as guidance to track progress and achieve conservation impact.  

These combined efforts will enable partners to strengthen and build on the success of the TraMCA initiative and help transition to the next phase, TraMCA 2.0, which will further identify critical issues related to changing demographics, climate change, and habitat degradation, and develop and share appropriate tools that will support policy-level decision-making while maintaining the traditional practices shared by the communities on either side of the border and strengthening their stewardship for driving forward a community-centric approach to successful biodiversity conservation at an international scale.