The Faculty of Biology Vietnam National University Hanoi presents: Lord Tiger Tiger Conservation in Viet Nam

In the lore of Vietnam, the tiger is respected almost as royalty. This respect owes as much to fear as honour. Known as "chua son lam" "stronger than any mountain inhabitant". It is said that the tiger can vanguish any other animal.

Hence the tiger reigns. Stories of tigers mauling people or attacking livestock abound and indeed many of these stories are true. The Ede people in the cental plateau are among those who traditionally clear a wide swath around their villages and post guards to prevent tigers from creeping inside.

The tiger has many assignations: Ho and Cop and Hùm. Also known as "Ong ba muoi" or "Lord 30", because tigers are said to be very active on the last night of the last month of the lunar year. People make offerings to Lord Tiger on this night fearing the consequences if they do not.

It is even said in parts of Annam that the tiger can transform itself magically into human form. Such magic does not exist. If it did, perhaps tigers would not be in such danger of extermination.

The truth is quite the opposite. Many people in Asia believe that the essence of the tiger's strength, agility and wisdom can be refined from its bone and sinew, boiled into a gluey potion called "cao ho cot" and in this way, the tiger is destroyed by its own fable.

Tigers are at the top of the food chain. According to some studies, single male may hunt over as much as 150 square kilometres. So as forests shrink under human encroachment, tigers have less room to forage. And so increasingly tigers face human predators equipped with an armoury far more deadly than their own.

Though tigers once ranged throughout Asia, their numbers have fallen dramatically. Tigers have disappeared from Bali, Java and perhaps southern China. They are critically threatened in Sumatra. The large Siberian tiger is endangered, as is the much smaller Bengal tiger. Not only are these magnificent animals disappearing, their physical variation signifying their adaptation to different habitats is also - along with these habitats - disappearing, perhaps never to return.

The scientific name for the variety of tiger inhabiting the forests of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia is Panthera tigris corbetti, described by Mazak in 1968 from a specimen that came from the vicinity of the Central Vietnam coastal town of Nha Trang.

The Indochinese tiger faces the twin threat of poaching and habitat loss. Tiger bone and other parts are traded into China to stock the pharmacies. Almost three quarters of the tigers killed in Vietnam find their way North in this way. Tigers are among the many wild resources which poor local people barter away for cheap store goods, a little rice wine or a hard earth seat at a kung-fu video, shown over the cough of a generator. Village-level dealers funnel these exotic goods into the pipeline of illicit trade.

It is a lucrative trade, difficult for Vietnam's under-funded forest protection and customs services to stem. This problem is made even worse since many poor local people have few ways to make a living. Many migrated illegally to the forested uplands to escape the even more desperate poverty in crowded lowland provinces.

Finding an alternative livelihood for poor people is integral to saving tigers.

Estimates from WWF and the Tiger Preservation Trust suggest that somewhere between 500 between and perhaps 1,700 or 2,000 Indochinese tigers are left alive in the world. A Vietnamese expert report estimated that in 1995 as few as 200 tigers remained in Vietnam. However, zoologist Vu Ngoc Thanh is one of several experts who think that the actual number is lower - There may be as few as 80 tigers left in Vietnam. Limited funding for fieldwork means that an accurate census - much less management - is impossible.

WWF scientists using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, have constructed maps ranking more favourable tiger habitats in Asia. From this basis, the basis of a management plan can be devised. But clearly funding for on-the-ground support is needed for management to succeed.

An important finding of this study is that the majority of top priority tiger conservation areas are near international borders. This is also true in Vietnam, reinforcing the importance of recent agreements with Laos and Cambodia to develop trans-border reserves in regions like Pu Mat - Vu Quang and Mom Ray in Vietnam's Centre and Muong Nhe in the North.

An expert report pointed out that the government of Vietnam has established legislation to promote conservation of natural resources. Tigers, along with most wildlife species, are protected in Vietnam and forest management ostensibly is coordinated through to the village level. Vietnam became a signatory of the CITES Convention in 1994. But Vietnam has little money to make laws function in practice. Work for officers in forest protection pays poorly, and it can be dangerous.

Vietnam is in this dilemma: an ever more desperate need to respond to threats contrasted with sheer lack of resources to do so.

Ultimately, science and law enforcement but more important, a realistic appreciation of the tiger's environment and the aspirations of the Vietnamese people can solve these problems.

But Vietnamese science needs your help in several key areas:

• forest protection officers, customs agents and local governments need better training;
  
• environmental awareness - the real value of these natural resources today and for the future - needs strengthening;
  
• thre is an urgent need for knowledge environmentally sustainable development to proliferate into poor provinces and the excessive, destructive human migration to these regions must cease;
  
• field research, coupled with data analysis is urgently needed to identify priority conservation areas;
  
• international funds and research cooperation is vital to this task.

Vietnam National University - Hanoi is one of Vietnam's leading institutions in tiger conservation. The Department of Vertebrate Zoology is pleased to accept a grant from ESSO Corporation, part of our commitment to preserving the majestic beauty of our country for our children and for the World to see.

This page is in part the product of a 1995 workshop on 'Tiger Prey Species' which was supported by the government of Malaysia and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

The Department of Vertebrate Zoology (Faculty of Biology) of the Vietnam National University Hanoi wishes to thank Viet Nam for supporting its tiger conservation and awareness program.

Photos of Indochinese tiger Panthera tigris corbetti used in this report were kindly provided by Michael Seres <seres@rmy.emory.edu> These photos were taken in Usti nad Labem Zoo in (former) Czechoslovakia in about 1980. Thanks to Colin Rayfield for scanning slides.

The tiger button was thoughtfully designed by William Li <wllk@globalxs.nl> who has also provided some of our internet sources. William asks that you copy this graphic and use it to encourage support for tiger conservation.

Updated: 25 February, 1998