Special Dogs Assist in Wild Tiger Conservation Efforts in Cambodia |

In the Asian zodiac, this is the year of the tiger but conservationists say wild tiger populations are quickly disappearing. In Cambodia, there is hope that a pair of special dogs from the United States can help save the tiger.

Daniel Schearf | Mondulkiri, Cambodia 22 February 2010

Photo: AP

A female tiger, Neang Sros, gapes while her taking a rest at the Tuek Chhou Zoo in Kampot province, some 150 kilometers south of the Phnom Penh, Cambodia

In Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia conservationists estimate hunting and poaching have reduced tiger numbers to fewer than 30 in each country.

In eastern Cambodia's Mondulkiri Protected Forest, conservationists have brought in unique specialists to track down the few remaining tigers.

Sadie May and Scooby Doo are black Labrador retrievers. They are part of Conservation Canines, a project at the University of Washington in the U.S. that trains dogs to sniff for wild animal feces - also called scat.

Scooby's handler, Jennifer Hartman, says the dogs are much faster than human researchers at finding tiger scat.

"And we train them to sit at them, which shows us that they have something," she said. "And, we come and check it out. And, all of our dogs are extremely ball driven - they love to play. So, their reward for finding a scat is they get to play ball for two to three minutes and that keeps them good all day long."

The handlers note where the scat is found and take a sample for analysis to determine if it is from a tiger and to check the animal's health.

Sadie's handler, Elizabeth Seely, says they can learn a lot from animal droppings.

"We can get hormone levels, physiological data, disease status," she said. "And, all of it combined will give us an overall population health."

Cambodia's Mondulkiri Forest was once rich in wildlife, including tigers, but hunting and poaching largely emptied the region and killed off almost all the tigers.

Lean Kha was a soldier with the communist Khmer Rouge in the early 1980s and admits he killed wildlife for food and trade, including 14 tigers.

He says he became a forest ranger to make up for what he calls his past sins.

"There were a lot of animals when I was with the Khmer Rouge and less afterwards," he said. "But, since I became an animal protector it seems like wildlife numbers are increasing."

Conservation Canines has teamed up with Cambodian rangers and the conservation group WWF to protect wild tigers. The big cats once roamed throughout Asia, into Siberia, but conservationists say only a few thousand tigers remain in the wild; far more live in captivity. Without immediate action, the WWF says, by 2022, there may no longer be any wild tigers.

Nick Cox, the WWF's Dry Forest and Tiger Program coordinator for the countries along Southeast Asia's Mekong River, says the forests of Cambodia's eastern plains offer an intact habitat for reviving wild tigers.

"These are some of the largest protected areas in this part of Asia and particularly important for conservation because they hold huge potential for recovering wildlife populations including tiger," he said.

The WWF has set up cameras in parts of the forest to capture images of elusive wildlife.

But the last photo they got of a tiger was in 2007.

Conservationists hope that Sadie May and Scooby Doo will find some fresher evidence of wild tigers - and help efforts to save them.

Experts: Tigers fast dying out despite campaigns

KATMANDU, Nepal — The world's tiger population is declining fast despite efforts to save them, and new strategies are urgently needed to keep the species from dying out, international wildlife experts said Tuesday.

"We are assembled here to save tigers that are at the verge of extinction," Nepal's secretary of forest and soil conservation, Yuvaraj Bhusal, told a conference of tiger experts from 20 countries, including the 13 where wild tigers are still found.

An estimated 3,500 to 4,000 tigers now roam the world's forests, down from the more than 100,000 estimated at the beginning of the 20th century. All the remaining tigers are in Asia.

Participants at the conference, which also includes the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund and other groups, plan to discuss strategies for tiger conservation, as well as challenges such as poaching, the trade of tiger parts and conflicts between tigers and local populations.

In a recent case, a Sumatran tiger died after being caught in a pig snare last week in Indonesia, the country's news agency, Antara, reported Monday. The report said the tiger died as it was being prepared for surgery Monday. Only about 250 Sumatran tigers remain in the wild.

"Despite our efforts in the last three decades, tigers still face threats of survival. The primary threat is from poaching and habitat loss," Nepal's prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal told the conference.

He said extreme poverty has also challenged efforts.

"Global and regional solidarity and corrective measures are more necessary now than ever to face these challenges," the prime minister said.

Bhusal, the forest secretary, said participants hope to make high-level policy makers in their countries more aware of the animal's possible extinction.

The 13 countries where wild tigers are still found include Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The conference continues through Friday.

Tiger kills zoo worker in southern Vietnam

Tiger kills zoo worker in southern Vietnam

Doctors treat Nguyen Thanh Giau's injuries at Binh Duong General Hospital. A zoo worker in Binh Duong Province was killed on Thursday by a tiger that leapt from its enclosure into an unoccupied den where three men were planting trees.

According to other employees of Dai Nam Zoo, the tiger jumped over the two-and-half-meter concrete wall surrounding its enclosure. Nguyen Cong Danh, 47, died on the spot while Nguyen Thanh Giau, 21, had to be rushed to hospital with severe injuries to the head and neck. The other man escaped by diving into a moat. The Indochina tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), which weighed more than 150 kilograms, was then forced back into its den. Duong Thanh Phi, director of Dai Nam Zoo, which is also a resort, told Thanh Nien the tiger was coming into rut, which might have given it the extra strength to leap so high. There’s also suspicion that the tiger was frightened by the cranes lifting the trees into position. It was the first such incident in the zoo’s history and was beyond anyone’s control, Phi said. He told the newswire Vnexpress Thursday it was impossible for the tigers to escape into the public area because of the electric fence and the four-meter deep by eight-meter wide moat. The zoo’s managers visited Giau at Binh Duong General Hospital on Thursday but made no comment. The Binh Duong Bureau of Forest Management said it was investigating the incident as well as animal management generally at the zoo. An inspection of Dai Nam Zoo Co. Ltd. in July revealed there were 13 tigers at the zoo, nearly double the seven it was registered for. In total, the company was keeping 583 wild animals of 71 species but its license, which had expired by then, only permitted 294 animals of 27 species. Inspectors conceded that the enclosures were properly designed and that there were qualified veterinarians on the premises to take care of the animals, but also found that the zoo did not record its breeding and raising methods to ensure the animals maintained normal reproduction under captive conditions. Reported by Hoang Tuan