FUNDING TIGER conservation simply to ensure the health of the species in the wild may not appeal to the average venture capitalist, but two nature-loving businessmen have committed their first ten million dollars to the cause.

This is not the first time that private funding is available for such objectives, but the "Tigers Forever" initiative for Asia announced by the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society is being described as a venture capital investment because it expects biologists to provide a guaranteed return in the form of a 50 per cent increase in tiger populations in key areas.

The programme led by scientist Alan Rabinowitz has been promised the $10 million over 10 years by venture capitalists and cat lovers Michael Cline and Tom Kaplan, both belonging to the Panthera Foundation. India's oft-cited tiger scientist, K. Ullas Karanth, who heads the national programme of WCS, is the technical director of the plan.

In India, where an estimated 1,200 tigers survive (Nature, Vol 441, 2006) WCS proposes to cover a 5,560 square kilometre swathe of the Western Ghats south of Goa up to the Kerala border, hosting approximately 260 tigers at present. The science-mediated effort is being funded with the sole expectation that tiger numbers will grow in various locations such as Myanmar's Hukawng Valley (listed as the world's largest tiger reserve), Thailand's Huai Kha Thaeng and Thung Ya protected areas, the Russian Far East, Laos and Cambodia, besides the Western Ghats.

"Tigers Forever" has interesting elements for the conservation community and nature-loving citizens. The tangible, incentive-based approach that it talks about can persuade field-level actors in conservation to work more actively and yet stay within the norms of the state-run protected area system.

On a wider scale, the plan can make ecologically sensitive tiger tourism more attractive by increasing the chances of spotting the charismatic big cats. This would add to the economic importance of reserves rather than make them appear to be taxing investments.

Studies indicate that serious tourists will pay higher entry fees to visit a reserve than they do at present, if there is a greater possibility of sighting a larger number of species. Such earnings raise the profile of a protected area (only a part of which is open to tourism, the major portion being categorised as an off-limits conservation zone) and provide a direct economic return. This would remove the pressure to convert forests to other uses, particularly agriculture, because they are seen as yielding little else for the neighbouring community; often, it is more expensive to reclaim such land at a later date and return it to nature. Conservation scientist Robin Naidoo and his colleagues believe this to be true based on their research in a rainforest reserve in Uganda with reference to birds (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005).

There is in addition the beneficial effect of species-preservation for whole communities that will become less dependent on forest produce, thanks to alternative employment and income. Finally, a safe habitat for the tigers will also save the associated ecosystem and all its biodiversity.

The venture capital funds will be sharply targeted at removing some long-standing weaknesses. The least appreciated of these is, arguably, the loss of the prey base for tigers, mainly due to hunting. Dr. Karanth and his colleagues noted this in the case of Nagarahole National Park in Karnataka where some communities used a variety of hunting techniques to kill hoofed animals. Such depletion of ungulates leads to what Dr. Rabinowitz and others refer to as the "empty forest syndrome."

Nagarahole presents consistent evidence of forests being emptied out of both prey and tigers until conservation was taken up in a serious manner. It now has one of the healthiest populations of tigers in the country — about 60 — a success attributed to the twin efforts to relocate 12 villages and curb poaching (Nature, 2006).

"One of our most effective strategies is to build informant networks. Finding out who the primary hunters are," Dr. Rabinowitz said in a radio interview after the launch of the WCS initiative. The availability of funds will help reduce hunting of sambar, spotted deer, and wild pig, among other ungulates, by creating incentives for the local community to identify animal traps and hand them over. They will also unravel field level links of poaching networks; there will be bounties for the diligent rangers and field workers.

Well-funded science-based conservation in the non-governmental sector is a model that will be closely watched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The possibility of providing financial support for the relocation of tribals who aspire to an improved quality of life outside the forest can get the domestic corporate sector and citizens also involved in a significant way.

This agenda assumes greater importance also because of the perceived gulf between tribal interests and conservation goals. It could help reduce the damage done by graziers who now take thousands of cattle into national parks adjacent to their villages everyday, often on contract to others; precious biodiversity is lost as a result.

There is also the issue of profit-oriented market forces trying to establish linkages with tribals to harvest forest produce.

With the pressures of modernisation, tribals are looking for alternatives in many places. A case in point is the transition of the traditional hunter-gatherers of Nagarahole. In the book Riding the Tiger, (Cambridge University Press, 1999) Dr. Karanth, Dr. Mel Sunquist, and Mr. K.M. Chinnappa say these communities switched to "slash and burn farming, and subsequently, to collecting non-timber forest products for sale to the urban and industrial commercial markets. Their diet and lifestyles now fully reflect their integration with the market economy."

Environmental-minded venture capital can provide the means to resolve this conflict between tribals and the forest. Even if this is a second order priority, the primacy given to science in the wild areas will create a wealth of data and help shape better policy.