Affiliations: 1) UTTARANCHAL UNIVERSITY, DEHRADUN, INDIA; 2) WILDLIFE INSTITUTE OF INDIA, DEHRADUN, INDIA
Keywords: Ecological & conservation genetics
Poaching of the tiger for their body parts is burgeoning due to their demand for global trade, which has become a major challenge for tiger conservation. Increased poaching of Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) has significantly contributed to local extinction in Panna and Sariska Tiger Reserves in India. The most effective way to contain this trade/poaching is to detect poaching hotspots by examining the parts and products seized under wildlife offenses. This enables authorities to execute law enforcement to tiger poaching hotspots and potentially prevents trade before the wildlife is actually killed. Thus, we discuss combined genetic and statistical approaches to detect poaching hotspots of Bengal tigers in India based on unique mitochondrial DNA haplotypes and multi-locus microsatellite genotyping and identify selective sex poaching. Therefore, in the first step, we examined tiger blood (n=20), and scat (n= 263) samples collected from 11 tiger populations using 9 microsatellite loci to generate a uniform genetic database of tigers from these populations. In the second step, we undertook 48 tiger samples which were seized in different states (Northern, Central, Southern, and North-Eastern) of India by different enforcement agencies. Based on unique mtDNA haplotypes and multilocus genotyping, tiger poaching cases (n=48) were assigned to northern (20%) and central India (51%) tiger populations. Thus, more conservation efforts are needed in central India tiger populations to prevent poaching. Male tigers (71%) were found more prone to poaching as compared to female tigers (29%) among all case samples analyzed so far. We have also identified central and north Indian states as major hubs for tiger trade. This is the first study on detecting poaching hotspots for Bengal tigers in India and the method we used can be applied to trace geographic origins of other tiger sub-species from confiscated tiger parts which would facilitate curtailing global trafficking in tiger trade. This method can be applied to any wild animal species for their better conservation efforts.