China may not join alliance on conservation of big cats

China is unlikely to be a part of the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA), a global initiative spearheaded by India to focus concerted attention on conserving big cats, according to senior officials in the Environment Ministry.

Saudi Arabia has confirmed its membership in the IBCA, and Brazil, though yet to formally announce its participation, has not yet come into the fold as governmental procedures regarding membership are still ongoing, an official said.

The big cats consist of the tiger, lion, leopard, cheetah, puma, jaguar, and snow leopard.

“We have sent an invitation to China but there has been no development on it yet,” an official told The Hindu.

IBCA, which is being spearheaded by India, is to hold its first-ever summit here from June 1-3, with representatives from 95 countries expected to participate. As of now, there are 24 member countries, three observer countries and several other ‘range’ countries as part of the alliance.

Independent scientific assessments indicate that China, at present, has a very small wild tiger population, with nearly all of them restricted to the northeast borderlands with Russia. These are largely Amur (Siberian) tiger (Panthera tigris altaica).

Camera-trap and landscape studies by Chinese and international researchers estimate roughly 50-70 wild Amur tigers in China, mostly in the forests of Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces along the Sino-Russian frontier, forming the southwestern edge of a larger transboundary population centred in the Russian Far East.

By contrast, the South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) — the only tiger subspecies endemic to China — is regarded by conservation biologists as functionally extinct in the wild, with no scientifically confirmed free-ranging individuals despite repeated surveys since the early 2000s. 

India presents the opposite picture. It had about 3,167 wild tigers in 2022 — overwhelmingly the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). India has well over 95% of Asia’s wild tiger population outside Russia, and more than 50 times China’s numbers. The tigers are spread across a network of reserves and forest landscapes from the Himalayas to the Western Ghats and central India.

Though IBCA members have no financial commitments, countries will be expected to, among other things, coordinate action through programmes and activities aimed at improving the state of habitats, prey, and big cats, including big cat protection and conservation, innovation, research, development and capacity building; share relevant information about big cat protection and conservation programmes.