Moos’ Blog

Do you still under­stand what is going on in this world we inhabit and try to live in? I don’t! Are things com­pli­cated or do we make them com­pli­cated? I do under­stand that dif­fer­ent regions have dif­fer­ent issues, because of dif­fer­ences in polit­i­cal, cul­tural or geo­graph­i­cal cli­mate. And I do under­stand that deci­sions have to be taken and choices to be made to solve these issues. But why fight over the resources at stake, the ecosys­tem ser­vices (land, water, food, energy, ….), while the only thing this will accom­plish is under­pin­nig of the dif­fer­ences over and over again. Why don’t we address the big­ger pic­ture we should worry about, and which is the dri­ving fac­tor behind all those regional issues, in my opin­ion. The world that is being exploited and depleted by us, mean­ing man as a speciesthat single-​handedly is killing the world we live in.

Shouldn’t it make life eas­ier for deci­sion mak­ers all over the world when all deci­sions should only address the sav­ing of this planet and enable many next gen­er­a­tions of humans to enjoy their life on beau­ti­ful Mother Earth? There is first evi­dence that things are turn­ing for the worst. In his recently pub­lished arti­cle in Nature, Max­imil­lian Auffham­mer refers to evi­dence, for the first time based on pro­duc­tion records and not on mod­els, for an alarm­ing dis­rup­tive sce­nario about declin­ing sta­ple food crop yields world­wide due to cli­mate change.

Though I am afraid that the world has become too com­pli­cated to inter­pret all the dif­fer­ent needs and solve them by try­ing to focus on one sin­gle issue as sug­gested, the world will not be able to sup­port us any more when we go on like we do right now. We are responsible.

There­fore, we should try to talk some sense into the peo­ple who can make a dif­fer­ence and have the power to cre­ate an effect. Let us begin small, because the grand mas­ter plan for sav­ing Mother Earth is still lack­ing, but needs lit­tle gems to prove it is possible.

So, what am I look­ing for? What “small issue” I think should be addressed and require com­bined efforts of world’s cit­i­zens and politi­cians to make this world a bet­ter place? Con­ser­va­tion of the big cats, the world’s largest preda­tors. That is my ulti­mate small goal.

It should not be too dif­fi­cult to com­bine efforts in this domain which is dom­i­nated by NGOs. Their moti­va­tion is the same and con­tains a global per­spec­tive. Funds must be raised and a com­mon pot cre­ated, out of which essen­tial con­ser­va­tion activ­i­ties, and research to sup­port focussing the con­ser­va­tion efforts, can be financed. A large com­mon pot will be more effec­tive than many small ones, and more­over it will not con­fuse donors about what vital work will be done with their money. So, they do not have to make choices which fundraiser (con­ser­va­tion group) should get their money. Well, this was very naïve on my behalf. While get­ting acquainted via a thor­ough web search with the con­ser­va­tion soci­eties, NGOs, small pres­sure groups, and oth­ers address­ing big cat con­ser­va­tion, I realised that I could not have been more wrong. All of these groups try to raise funds — which can be paid eas­ily via web-​based pay­ment sys­tems, of course — by look­ing for moti­vated indi­vid­u­als like me. Peo­ple who are to be regarded as con­cerned cit­i­zens and want to save the world. Peo­ple who have sim­i­lar moti­va­tions when think­ing of the future. Peo­ple who want to con­serve large preda­tors from extinc­tion. So, why force us to make choices between these con­ser­va­tion soci­eties or NGOs? Which of these ide­al­is­tic organ­i­sa­tions will have the great­est impact, while using are donated funds? Do we know? I don’t!

To show you the prob­lem of the many organ­i­sa­tions work­ing in the domain of large feline preda­tor con­ser­va­tion I will pro­vide you with the results of my web search. And mind you, this looks com­pre­hen­sive but there are more. Definitely!

There is the Global Tiger Ini­tia­tive and its par­tic­i­pants (29.05.2011) which is an excel­lent ini­tia­tive within the scope of my problem:

Aaranyak

Amer­i­can Col­lege of Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Medicine

Ani­mal­sA­sia Foundation

Ani­mal Wel­fare Institute

ASEAN-​WEN, Wildlife Enforce­ment Network

Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos & Aquariums

British & Irish Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos & Aquariums

Born Free — Tiger conservation

Care for the Wild International

Con­ser­va­tion International

The Cor­bett Foundation

Coun­cil of Col­leges of Acupunc­ture and Ori­en­tal Medicine

David Shep­herd Wildlife Foundation

Free­land

Global Envi­ron­ment Facility

Global Tiger Patrol

Humane Soci­ety International

IFAW

Save the Tiger Fund of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Smith­son­ian Institution

Smith­son­ian National Zoo­log­i­cal Park

Species Sur­vival Network

Tigris Foun­da­tion

Traf­fic

21^st Cen­tury Tiger

WildAid

Wildlife Alliance

Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Nepal

Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Society

Wildlife Trust of India

Wildlife Watch Group

World Asso­ci­a­tions of Zoos and Aquariums

The World Bank

World Wildlife Fund — Tiger

World Ani­mal Protection

ZSL Liv­ing Conservation

In addi­tion I have iden­ti­fied (29.05.2011):

All for Tigers

Alta Amur Leop­ard Conservation

Asso­ci­a­tion for Species Con­ser­va­tion in India

Aus­tralia Zoo Wildlife War­riors — Tiger conservation

Big Cat Rescue

Cat Action Treasury

Defend­ers of Wildlife

Earth­trust

Envi­ron­men­tal Inves­ti­ga­tion Agency

Fauna and Flora International

The Fund for the Tiger

IUCN Cats Spe­cial­ist Group

National Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Authority

Pacific Envi­ron­ment, pro­tect­ing the liv­ing envi­ron­ment of the Pacific rim

Pan­thera, lead­ers in wild cat conservation

Phoenix Fund, a col­lec­tive bio­di­ver­sity recov­ery programme

The Roar Foun­da­tion, Sham­bala preserve

Save China’s Tigers

doubt­ful organ­i­sa­tion, with oppo­si­tion from promi­nent South African and inter­na­tional con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tions (because of the train­ing of tigers in cap­tiv­ity to learn to hunt again; and the Africa con­nec­tion (train­ing facil­i­ties in South Africa) with the chance of intro­duc­tion of feline dis­eases that do not exist in Asia yet (like FIV))

Save the Stripes

The Suma­tran Tiger Trust

Tiger Aware­ness

with weblinks to sev­eral small con­ser­va­tion organisations

Tiger Miss­ing Link Foundation

Wildlife Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety of india

I want to call on these organ­i­sa­tions for sup­port. Help me to choose, organ­ise your­self! Joint efforts will be more effec­tive and effi­cient, and will cre­ate an ever so needed lit­tle gem which the grand mas­ter plan for sav­ing Mother Earth can build on!

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