Myanmar - Global Tiger Initiative

Part 4: Status and Distribution of Tigers in Myanmar - 2002Almost a third of the reports of tigers were of direct sightings made after 1990 (AppendixIII). The two extreme explanations are that all local people made mistakes in identifyingtigers e.g. they saw something else but reported tiger, or that all local people actually sawtigers when they reported seeing tigers. The truth probably lies somewhere between theextremesIt is possible, at least for more disturbed sites, that tigers are no longer resident butpopulations instead consist of transient individuals that hold no territory or defined homerange (G. Schaller pers. comm., 2002). These transient individuals might cover relativelylarge areas in search of food and mates, returning to a place only after a lengthy period of time.This would explain their absence during the surveys but infrequent recent reports from locals.Differences in survey technique or skill levels are unlikely to explain the differences betweentiger occurrence at Myanmar and Thailand sites. Training for field staff was standardizedand given by the same trainer (A.J. Lynam). Sign surveys were conducted with the samedegree of rigor and camera-trap locations chosen in the same ways by teams in the differentcountries. If tigers were present they should have turned up in the surveys in Myanmar.However, if tigers are absent or not continuously present at a site, then their probability ofdetection by any survey method would be less than one. Where tigers occur at very lowdensity e.g.