Today there’s good news from Born Free.

100 years ago, there were about 100,000 tigers across Asia.   Today, there are just 4,000 and the tiger is officially classified a Endangered by the IUCN (that’s the International Union for Conservation of Nature).

Threats to tigers include

• Human-wildlife conflict
• Poaching for body parts for traditional “medicine”
• Habitat loss because of deforestation and development, which people are driving

Born Free have an initiative called Living with Tigers.  It’s a network of Indian NGOs working across central India in the Satpuda area.   

The network does a number of things, namely to:

• Tackle the poaching crisis
• Safeguard tiger habitats
• Find compassionate solutions so that communities and wildlife can live together

There’s a dedicated teams of Tiger Ambassadors.  These are local villagers who are trained to identify signs of tigers being present in their area and to help if conflict arises.

There’s also a Mobile Education Unit which teachers local school children about wildlife conservation.

So the good news for tiger conservation is....

Tiger numbers have increased to 500 across the Satpuda landscape in the last 10 years.  This is great news but Born Free wants to go further.   It wants to: 

1. Safeguard wild tiger populations in central India
2. Work with more local communities to reduce human-wildlife conflict
3. Create more protected areas so that wildlife can flourish
4. Educate more people on the importance of conservation and approaches to co-existence.