This is the first of a series of blogs that I will be writing about tigers in the wild and what harm humans have wrought on this magnificent creature.
International Tiger Forum November 21-24, 2010, St. Petersburg, Russia pledges $330m to double the wild tiger population in the next 12 years
Leaders of 13 states which have wild tiger populations, international donors and conservationists attended the International Tiger Forum in St. Petersburg (Russia) summit, to find a solution to the 97% decline of tigers in the wild over the past 100 years. They have pledged to prevent the extinction of the world’s last wild tiger populations, which, until now, was an unimagined possibility. The summit was the final push by the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), launched in 2008 by Robert Zoellick, World Bank President. The summit was led by Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and China’s premier Wen Jiabao and resulted in a combined pledge of almost $330m (£208m) “aimed at making the great cat worth more alive than dead“.
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio pledged a million dollars of his personal funds towards conservation.
How could 100,000 tigers be reduced to 3,200 in the wild in a mere 100 years? Stay tuned.
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