New study for species considered ‘too rare to save’ such as the Siberian Tiger. By targeting key threats, critically endangered species may now have new hope!
Siberian Tiger
Co-author of the report, Dr. Philip Stephens, School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University, said: “Populations usually show rapid declines as a result of human activities such as hunting and habitat conversion. The results of the study are encouraging and show that if we can remove the negative effects of human activities, even relatively small populations could be viable in the long term.”
Dr. Greg Hayward, the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) regional ecologist for Alaska said: “This is good news for biologists working to save species like the tiger. There’s a lot of work to do to arrest the effects of poaching, prey loss and habitat destruction. However, if that work is successful, the tiger might yet be able to recover, despite the relatively small size of most tiger populations.”
The study, published in the journal, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, shows that population sizes required for long-term viability vary, both within and among species, and depend on the specific circumstances in which the population is found. Estimates of viable population sizes were typically reduced to hundreds rather than thousands of individuals for populations that were relatively stable.
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