One Last Stand

By far the longest segment of the tiger genetic chain will be the Himalayan-Indomalaysian corridor: descending from the Nepalese mountains to the very toe of continental Asia, it picks through Bhutan, eastern India, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia on its way to Malaysia. Rabinowitz knows he may have to settle for less, because countries in this region are particularly averse to any proposal that "smacks of open borders." His first supporter is the king of Bhutan, a well-liked monarch who Rabinowitz hopes will influence India and Burma.

Before he can present genetic corridors to lawmakers, though, Rabinowitz first has to know where they can go. What enabled him to so readily act on his epiphany about jaguars was a new technology springing up in all corners of conservation science: Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a technique for making intelligent maps. These maps allow Panthera's specialists to assess potential corridor terrain on multiple levels, from elevation to the density of vegetation to the proximity of human settlement and infrastructure. Combined with precise Global Positioning System satellite technology, GIS becomes a powerful tool for Panthera's detective work. Kathy Zeller and Sahil Nijhawan, the company's corridor sleuths, use a "least-cost" model to deduce pathways for jaguars: with an understanding of the animals' behavior, they measure the known obstacles to jaguar movement down to the specific types of vegetation that can help stow away a cat (corn and sugarcane fields make passable cover, vineyards are not so good). Then they dispatch teams for "groundtruthing"—checking their multi-tiered maps on the ground, interviewing local farmers and ranch hands and collecting evidence of the cats' activity. Ultimately, the proof of a successful corridor will be in the scat, showing the dispersal of an individual's DNA from one population to another. In Latin America, Rabinowitz has to find the corridors already in use, in order to protect them; in Asia, since tiger populations are by and large fragmented, he has to find plausible corridors to implement.

Jaguar corridors are easier to create than tiger corridors. The illegal, exceedingly profitable market for tiger parts continues to thrive, from unregulated Asian border towns to Bangkok to New York's Chinatown. Local villagers still hunt the tiger's prey, because unlike domesticated pork or chicken, wild pig and deer meat are free. Tigers aren't even trying to disperse, in part because they can't, and in part because they are so few, they don't need to. "Even if there's a corridor," says Rabinowitz, "you only move if you have to leave. The dispersing happens from really solid, stable populations. Unfortunately, almost none of the remaining tiger populations are close to carrying capacity." In Asia, that means Panthera has less ostensible tracks to follow in figuring out where the tigers' preferred corridors would be. What they have is scat, collected from different populations, from which they can piece together a historic DNA trail that shows where movement once took place. Genes are a record of how closely populations are related, and thus how recently groups were split. The very genes the operation is designed to save contain the key to uncovering the past corridors that Panthera needs to re-create.

The primary negotiations for tiger corridors will not hinge on whether people can live with wildlife but whether states can. Corridors aren't a hard line against development; they need protection under zoning laws to keep from being obstructed by a dam, or a highway, or a factory—but otherwise, they're usable lands. A country can have corridors if it has a land-use plan, keeping corridor zones closed to industry and major infrastructure but open to agriculture. The key to saving the big cats is not a willingness to sacrifice development but a capacity for smart management.

Tolerance is something you can teach, but for more immediate effect, you can buy it. About 150,000 people live in Burma's Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve, which Rabinowitz created in 2004. In addition to farms there is a police station, a firehouse, a Buddhist temple, several Christian churches, and a prisoners' work camp. The residents know they live in a tiger reserve because, in exchange, they receive benefits: teachers and power generators for otherwise abandoned schools, health services and medical supplies, guards on patrol—all paid for by Panthera and WCS.

For once, conservation has a pragmatic edge. The hope, in all its poetic irony, is that the new data-rich, processor-driven science of conservation will master the environment, so we can restore the wild and let it be—even in our midst.

© 2008