A tiger found dead in West Chanda Division, Maharashtra, 27 November 2010. © WPSI.
Women's Self-Help Group at the WPSI Tiger Conservation Centre in the Sundarbans, January 2011. © WPSI.
In 2010/11, The Rufford Foundation provided a grant of £40,000 to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI).
Since its inception in 1994, WPSI has spearheaded the fight against poaching and the illegal wildlife trade in India. It does this with intelligence gathering, training, awareness and community support.
Tiger Protection Programme
The Rufford Foundation supports a number of critical activities in our Tiger Protection Programme. These include WPSI’s flagship project, Investigation into Poaching and Illegal Trade in Wild Tigers, that provides assistance and information to government enforcement agencies to curb crimes against wild tigers. In 2010, WPSI recorded the deaths of 58 wild tigers. This was considerably lower than the 2009 figure of 85, although the number of tiger deaths due to poaching and the seizure of tiger parts remained much the same, 30 compared to 32 in 2009. WPSI provided information and assistance to enforcement authorities to register 34 wildlife cases in 2010 in which 87 alleged wildlife criminals were arrested.
Other important activities supported by The Rufford Foundation included anti-poaching training workshops for 355 forest personnel and a very successful ongoing secret information reward scheme for poaching and wildlife crime information. Thousands of posters have been put up and wall paintings made in villages around Pench, Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Tadoba Tiger Reserves to popularise the scheme.
The Rufford Foundation also supports WPSI’s Legal Programme which assists in the prosecution of important wildlife cases and offers free legal advice to curb wildlife crime.
Community projects include a Tiger Conservation Centre on the edge of Sundarbans Tiger Reserve in eastern India and assistance in the resettlement of Van Gujjars who voluntarily moved out of Rajaji National Park in northern India.
