Thailand Tiger Action Plan - Global Tiger Initiative

The Status of Tigers in ThailandTo provide an overview of tiger status in Thailand, the Wildlife ResearchDivision of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and PlantConservation conducted sign surveys in 149 terrestrial protected areasfrom 2004 to 2007 (Kanchanasaka et al., 2010). Here, the results of thesesurveys were combined with data from several other completed andongoing studies to provide an accurate estimate of the occupancy andestimated numbers of tigers in Thailand. Sources of data used in thiscompilation can be found in the Appendix.For the results of tiger status, surveys generating these data consisted of(1) searching for signs of tigers over 11,411 km 2 of likely tiger travel routesand (2) surveying by using camera traps to record photos of tigers carriedout over 3,000 km 2 within eight protected areas (Appendix 3-4). Bothsurvey approaches focused on the routes most likely tiger travels in givenareas such as dirt roads, animal trails, human footpaths, dry riverbeds,and ridgelines.Track survey data were summarized as the proportion of 500 metersections walked in which tracks were encountered at least once. Cameratrap data were analyzed using capture-recapture techniques to generateestimates of the density of tigers within given survey areas.To the best of our knowledge, tigers in Thailand occur strictly within theboundaries of existing protected areas. In order to express the status oftiger occurrence at the national level, we applied the following criteria atthe resolution of individual protected areas (Table 1):