New Delhi - The New
Year brought a new surprise for wildlife
monitoring teams near northeastern India’s
Kaziranga Tiger Reserve, as a tiger was
captured for the first time using one of
the important wildlife corridors south of
the famous park.
The Karbi Anglong landscape
south of Kaziranga has been used by wildlife
for generations during peak monsoon periods
when the Reserve itself if flooded. Camera
traps set up by WWF’s Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong
Conservation Programme (KKL) caught the
tiger in late December using the Kanchanjuri
corridor.
As the communities and tourism activities
in the already heavily populated region
south of Kaziranga grow, the area’s four
main wildlife corridors, including Kanchanjuri,
continue to be squeezed by human activity
and infrastructure. In addition to the tiger,
the photos also captured important and endangered
wildlife such as elephants, common leopards,
wild boar, barking deer and even a melanistic
leopard, commonly called a black panther.
The discoveries have
led WWF-India to reiterate its long term
support for these vital wildlife corridors.
The WWF KKL team has been working with communities
in the region since 2005, and has been documenting
wildlife using the corridors since initially
setting up camera traps in June 2010.
The Kaziranga-Karbi
Anglong landscape, in the far northeastern
Indian state of Assam, is one of 12 priority
landscapes in which WWF focuses its tiger
conservation efforts. Kaziranga Tiger Reserve
has the world’s highest density of Bengal
tigers. Animals migrating from Kaziranga
during floods to the Karbi Anglong hills
to the South use specific forested strips
or ‘corridors’ running across National Highway
37 to reach higher ground. Four main corridors
are currently intact – Kanchanjuri, Panbari,
Haldibari and Amguri.
WWF India is continuing to document tiger
and wildlife migrations, and will intensify
its efforts with communities in the region
to ensure thriving corridors and protection
of the species that use them.
+ More
Wild west fishing in
distant waters
A new WWF commissioned
study highlights the impact European fisheries
are having globally by fishing outside of
European waters.
The report entitled Spatial expansion of
EU and non-EU fishing fleets into the global
ocean 1950 to the present clearly shows
that European Union (EU) fishing fleets
have expanded beyond EU waters exploiting
new fishing ground since 1980 and increasing
the pressure on fish stocks.
The study for the first time allows viewers
to easily see the global expansion of fishing
activity, from 1950 to the present, through
an animated map.
It shows that European
vessels are now traveling to the furthest
corners of the world to fish. Declining
domestic catches and efforts to reduce the
number of vessels fishing in European waters
have resulted in many European fishing fleets
concentrating their fishing efforts elsewhere.
As part of its campaign
to see ambitious reform of the Common Fisheries
Policy (CFP), WWF is calling on the EU and
Member States to ensure that this fishing
zeal is matched by the accountability to
ensure its fleets fish sustainably, and
to champion sustainable fisheries management
on the international stage.
WWF also asks that the
€1 billion in earmarked EU budget for distant
water fleet operations and management are
in no way used to fund destructive or unstustainable
fishing practices.
The reform of its Common Fisheries Policy
is a unique opportunity for the EU to ensure
all EU vessels, wherever they operate in
the world, fish sustainably and to promote
sustainability principles internationally.
"We need to save
fisheries worldwide from decline and bankruptcy
and reverse marine degradation. If the EU
fails to take a leadership role in global
fisheries management and ocean protection,
it will further contribute to the global
fisheries crisis and jeopardise global food
security in the long run" Aimee Gonzales,
Manager, EU Fisheries and Trade, WWF International.
