India has the largest remaining tiger population in the world. The Bengal Tiger is perhaps the most recognizable symbol of your nation. Yet, the tiger population is declining at an alarming rate with most of the loss due to illegal hunting. In 2003, conservationists estimated the number of Indian tigers at 3,600. Today, less than a decade later, there are only around 1,300 Bengal tigers left in the country.
So devastating has the poaching been that loss of habitat, by far the main threat to most of the world’s other endangered species, is only second on the list of daunting problems facing tigers.
Commitments and promises have gone unfulfilled and there has been no attempt to identify and address the underlying causes of poaching in your country.
We urge you to fulfill the commitments made at the St. Petersburg conference in 2011 and to insure that fund earmarked for tiger protection be used solely for that purpose.
We call on you to show the world that India wants to preserve this creature as a living symbol of its heritage and not as an extinct reminder of what India was.
