<
https://abcnews.go.com/US/tiger-conservation-india-helping-mitigate-climate-change/story?id=99567912>
'The tiger conservation efforts in Asia have been so successful that they had
an unintended — and equally beneficial — consequence of preventing further
some greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere, a new study finds.
Enhanced protection of Indian forests for tiger conservation has prevented 1
million metric tons of carbon emissions as a result of averted forest loss,
according to a paper published Thursday in
Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The highest proportion of the world's wild tigers --
Panthera tigris — live
in India. When the Indian National Tiger Conservation Authority was established
in 2005 to rehabilitate the country's dwindling tiger population, many of the
tiger reserves were designated in the subsequent years, with the most recent
ones being established in 2022, according to the researchers.
While the sites were already considered protected areas, the designation as
tiger reserves resulted in enhanced monitoring and enforcement of forest
protection. In addition, the tiger reserves were required to prepare a
conservation plan that regulates forest product extraction, reduces
deforestation drivers and encourages sustainable livelihoods for communities
within the reserves.
Researchers compared rates of deforestation in tiger reserves to protected
areas without the additional tiger protection and calculated that there was
"significantly" less deforestation than what would have occurred without the
enhanced protection in 11 of the 45 studied tiger reserves, according to the
paper.
This forest conservation amounted to 5,802 hectares — or more than 14,000
acres — of net averted forest loss from 2007 to 2020, which the researchers
estimate corresponds to net avoided carbon emissions of about 1.08 million
metric tons.'
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
