Love Tigers launch. © CATT
World Bank launch. © CATT
The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation provided a grant of $100,000 in 2007/08.
With support from The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, the Campaign Against Tiger Trafficking (CATT) has built the International Tiger Coalition (ITC), which is an unprecedented alliance speaking with one voice against tiger trade to secure a future for wild tigers. The ITC consists of more than 40 member organizations which represent more than 100 organizations and tens of millions of individual members around the world. These organizations come from the environmental, animal welfare, zoo and traditional Chinese medicine communities and have offices and/or programmes in all tiger range countries.
In July 2007, the ITC worked closely with the governments of India, Nepal and Russia, the European Union, the United States and other countries to convince the 171 member countries of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to decide that tigers should not be farmed for sale of their parts and products.
A CATT-commissioned opinion survey in China shows that more than 90 percent of the Chinese public supports tiger conservation and keeping China’s 15-year domestic ban on tiger trade in place. China’s support of wild tigers is further documented by the CATT-supported Love Tigers website (www.ilaohu.org) a Chinese website created by artists and writers in China to raise awareness of the threats posed to wild tigers.
The CATT project was also the impetus for the June 2008 launch of a new World Bank tiger initiative(www.worldbank.org/tigers), which seeks to examine what has gone right and wrong in tiger conservation and to generate global political will and funding for immediate and effective action to reverse the decline of wild tigers.
Visit the Campaign Against Tiger Trafficking website.