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November 19, 2010
What do tigers mean to you?
Say “no” to tiger farms and help save tigers from extinction
There are fewer than 3,200 wild tigers left on the planet. Click here to join the campaign to save these magnificent creatures from extinction.
Tigers Need Conservation, Not Conversation
By Steven Galster
Steven Galster is director of FREELAND Foundation, an international, Asia-based environmental group. He currently directs the ASEAN-WEN Support Program from Bangkok
BANGKOK — Over the past decade, poachers have halved Asia’s population of tigers and are zeroing in now on the remaining, scattered 3,200. And what is the global conservation community doing to help? Doing what it does best: calling a meeting.
Conservation is turning into conversation. The International Tiger Forum being held in St. Petersburg is a case in point. Hundreds of participants from more than a dozen countries are gathered there for the seventh meeting in two years to discuss the plight of the critically endangered tiger. The well-intentioned event will result in a “St. Petersburg Declaration” to save the tiger, and a pitch to donors for a lot of money. Meanwhile, poachers and traffickers will continue to kill and smuggle more tigers.
The conversation needs to close. Any meeting that spends another minute or dollar in the name of tiger conservation should focus on expanding front-line wildlife protection, strengthening laws against wildlife crooks and enforcing the global ban on commercial tiger trading. (more…)
November 18, 2010
If we save the tigers, we’ll save the planet
Save Tigers Now is a global campaign by World Wildlife Fund and Leonardo DiCaprio. Our goal is to build political, financial and public support to double the number of wild tigers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.
By Leonardo DiCaprio and Carter S. Roberts
Tigers have long provoked awe in the human imagination, becoming symbols of untamed nature whose “fearful symmetry,” in the words of William Blake, has inspired everything from art to advertising. In the wild, however, tigers are on the verge of disappearing.
A century ago, some 100,000 tigers roamed the wilderness across much of Asia. But 100 years of human overhunting of tigers’ prey, such as deer and wild pigs, and of poaching driven by demand for tigers’ skins and other body parts has been catastrophic. As few as 3,200 tigers remain, living in only 7 per cent of their original natural habitat. (more…)
Saving the tigers: a slideshow
Illegal hunting and poaching of tigers has driven these magnificent predators to the verge of extinction. Watch this slideshow to learn more about what actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as the World Wildlife Fund, are doing to save tigers from extinction. Then join our global campaign to Save Tigers Now.
