Asia-Pacific News
Vietnam's tiger population halved in a decade
Dec 30, 2011, 4:14 GMT
Hanoi - The number of wild tigers in Vietnam shrank from 100 a decade ago to fewer than 50, an official said Friday.
'Illegal poaching and the wildlife trade are the main reasons leading to a sharp decline in tiger numbers,' said Le Xuan Canh, director of the Institute for Ecology and Biological Resources. 'Deforestation has also badly affected the living habitat of tigers.'
Canh said the cats, all of them Indochina tigers, were now living in a 9,300-square-kilometre area in six provinces of Vietnam.
Vietnam signed commitments to protect the species, their prey and habitat at the International Tiger Forum held last year in St Petersburg.
The goal is to increase the world's tiger population by 2022 to 7,000 from the current 3,200.
Scientists urged authorities at a meeting organized by the Department of Forest Management Thursday to speed up the process of protecting endangered species, including tigers, the state-run newspaper Viet Nam News reported.
They recommended microchips be implanted in wild tigers and the establishment of protection zones.
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