Hope for the tiger lives on!  So far as the fate of the tiger is concerned, the last few months saw an escalated threat – not from poachers but from a sector of illicit industry which is the raison deter of poaching activity. It has been a well known fact that demand for tiger parts is primarily generated by manufacturers of the Chinese traditional medicine which prizes them highly. Having finished off almost all the wild population of wild tigers in their own country, the Chinese trade in medicine lobbied their Government to permit setting up of tiger farms. Later the Chinese Government subscribed to a CITES sponsored ban on trade in tiger parts. Farmers who had invested in setting up tiger farms came to a point of bankruptcy and began surviving on illegally selling tiger meat and bones. They slowly built up a lobby to get the internal ban lifted and this initiative reached its climax  in the wake of the CITES  meet at the Hague in June this year.

 The activity was intercepted by a group of conservationists who understood the implications of the dangerous paradigm shift being  advocated and vigorously being peddled by a hired lobby of the Chinese business interests. 
It became apparent that their strategy had the implicit support of the Chinese Government under another dubious garb of  re-wilding of domestic tigers. A  partnership of  NGOs named the International Tiger Coalition was set up to confront the trade lobby and  picked up such tremendous support that by the time the CITES took place the Government of China had to disown the whole initiative and continue to uphold the ban. Victory indeed – not just to the NGOs but to their winning strategy. The intentions of a majority of organizations working to save the tiger have been largely honourable and laudable but it took them so much time to act upon the age old dictum : United we stand, divided we fall.

If lack of political will is the single most important obstacle for the survival of the tiger the recent events should be pointers to the remedy. Sustained concerted  action is needed and a good beginning has been made. The Corbett Foundation has been part of the Coalition and  its first battle .On the sidelines of this headlong confrontation, our Trustee , Nirmal Ghosh –journalist and conservationist – has countered the spurious arguments being promoted by those wanting a lifting of the ban on tiger trade and we bring to our readers his views in this issue. We pledge our continued support to the Coalition and look forward to nobler victories in this war for salvaging the sanity of  humans.

We are happy to inform our readers that our Chairman, Dilip D. Khatau has been appointed on the recently constituted Indian Board for Wildlife under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister .This will give us an opportunity to place our views before the powers that be and push for greater political will and government support for conservation.

We carry in this newsletter reports of our small interventions which may be at times only symbolic but they certainly have wider implications and  applications. We urge our readers to come forward and support us in any way possible and from wherever they are. We celebrated  the Wildlife Week  (1-7th October ) with some interesting events.  Please help save our wildlife and mother Earth - our one and only  planet known to have LIFE !