Hanoi (VNA)💟 – Numerous challenges are facing Vietnamin its efforts to realise the commitment to doubling the number of wild tigersby 2022.

The country made the commitment at the GlobalTiger Summit in Saint Petersburg city, Russia, in 2010.  In April 2014, a national programme for tigerconservation until 2022 was approved with the aim of protecting tigers, theirhabitat and their prey so as to help curb the decline of the number of the wildcats and gradually improve their population. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said on July 29that while wild tigers in Vietnam were less than five in 2016, the number ofcaptive and trafficked has amounted to hundreds. In 2017 and 2018, the Education forNature-Vietnam (ENV) surveyed 17 private facilities and found that there were296 tigers kept in the country, including 244 at private establishments and 52 atState-owned zoos and conservation centres. The number of captive tigers surgedfrom 54 in 2009 to 201 to 2017. Meanwhile, skins and bones of at least 228tigers have been seized from the 600 wildlife trafficking cases uncovered inVietnam over the last 15 years. Trafficking rings are pushing the tigers to thebrink of extinction, the ENV said, adding that in 2017 and 2019, it recorded2,650 violations, including 527 relevant to advertising, mainly on socialnetworks; 19 involving the storage of tiger parts or products; and 24 tigersmuggling and trafficking cases. Tiger-related violations were also continuallydiscovered in the first half of 2019. ENV Deputy Director Nguyen Phuong Dung said shehopes authorities will strictly deal with those infringements so as to fightback wildlife crime, which is getting complicated in Vietnam. The International Tiger Day (July 29) is anoccasion to improve the tiger awareness among people around the globe.Conservation organisations have called for joint efforts to protect tigers andsay “no” to tiger products so that the feline will not face the same destiny asthe Javan rhinoceros, which became extinct in Vietnam in 2010. -VNA