Let the tiger earn its stripes!

That is the last word from Barun’s article in FE. Some excerpts.

• The summit follows the new Global Tiger Initiative launched by the World Bank earlier in the year. The bottle was new, but the content was the same old stale stuff!

• It is believed that around 1,00,000, tigers roamed in the wild across 25 countries at the turn of the 1900. Today, barely 3,000 of them are in the wild. Another 10-15,000 are in captivity. The wild tiger, facing the prospect of extinction for the past 40 years, has seen a barrage of activism and funding. The Project Tiger was launched in the 1970s, then the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility directed more funds towards forestry and conservation, since the early 1990s. Over the years, innumerable conferences have been held and cash promised but nothing has helped the tiger yet. The summiteers in St Petersburg kept with that tradition, promising $350 million over the next few years, though more staunch environmentalists complained that barely 10% of this money is really new.

• The most practical solution to saving tigers is allowing human beings some sense of property over them. Almost every species that brings any economic benefit to humans is generally nurtured and preserved: the humble cow is not facing extinction, despite the massive economic exploitation.

• India is currently allocating about $20,000 per tiger per year and the money is not helping the tiger. Instead, a tiger could potentially earn 4 to 5 times as much and save itself from extinction.