Assessing Project Proposals Based on National and Global Tiger Action Plans: Lessons from the Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Programme (ITHCP)

Tigers play a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. Unfortunately, tigers are threatened by poaching, human-wildlife conflict, habitat loss, and more. In response to these threats, the conservation community pledged to double the worldwide wild tiger population by 2022 (known as TX2) at the "Tiger Summit" in St. Petersburg in 2010, and to track the progress of Tiger Range Countries. Between 2010 and 2022, the Global Tiger Recovery Programme was implemented. To accomplish this TX2 goal, each Tiger Range Country developed a National Tiger Action Plan (NTAP). The Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Programme (ITHCP) is a grant-making mechanism that focusses on a subsection of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme. It had twelve projects in six Tiger Range Countries during Phase 1 of the program. Evaluating the proposals of these projects is crucial for resource allocation. In this study, we assessed project proposals by evaluating how the proposed activities of all twelve ITHCP projects addressed their corresponding NTAPs, by comparing the plans against the proposals. A further comparison was undertaken using the Conservation Assured|Tiger Standards Lite, a site-based tiger conservation accreditation system. Overall, this study shows the importance of both global and national action plans and how comparing project activities with NTAP requirements can help address resource allocation needs to fill gaps in management. We conclude that projects should be designed to closely align with national action plans, best practice standards, and the activities of other projects in their landscape to maximize conservation outputs and impact. However, projects on their own are not enough to satisfy whole NTAPs.