Wildlife group, stars urge Indians to save the tiger
As China prepares to usher in the Year of the Tiger next week, a
massive publicity drive has begun in neighbouring India, where the big
cat is the national animal, to save it from extinction.
Conservation group WWF-India has enlisted the support of sports stars
and celebrities to raise awareness of the threat, citing government
estimates that there are just over 1,400 tigers left in the wild.
The campaign, fronted by India cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni
and top footballer Bhaichung Bhutia, was launched at the end of January
and has so far seen more than 75,000 people pledge their support on
www.saveourtigers.com.
"Stripey", a cute tiger cub who features in the print, online and
television advertisements, also has more than 70,000 fans on the
Internet social networking site Facebook and over 2,500 followers on
micro-blogging site Twitter.
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Indian tigers - Courtesy Google |
"Just 1,411 left. You can make a difference," the ad says, urging
people to lobby politicians to do more to protect the animal, which once
roamed freely across India and the sub-continent.
Diwakar Sharma, associate director for species conservation at WWF-India,
said they had been delighted with the response which they hoped would
push the issue up the political agenda.
"Public opinion is a must for this," he told AFP. "Public-private
partnership can change things... What we can do is try to influence this
public opinion."
Feared and worshipped in equal measure, the tiger - one of the
world's largest predators - holds a special place for Indians and has
become an icon of the country's cultural and natural heritage.
But despite conservation efforts over a number of years, Sharma said
the situation was now "critical" and conservationists cannot do the work
alone.
WWF-India has been working since 1973 to protect tigers, leading to
the creation of special reserves and protected areas in national parks
and wildlife sanctuaries.
The global wild tiger population is thought to be at an all-time low
of 3,200, down from about 20,000 in the 1980s and 100,000 a century ago.
At the turn of the 20th century, there were an estimated 40,000 tigers
in India.
As elsewhere across Southeast Asia, tiger numbers are threatened by
population growth, with a loss of natural habitat to agriculture and
available prey leading them to encroach on human settlements in search
of food.
AFP |
