July 29 is celebrated every year as International Tiger Day or Global Tiger Day around the world. The day is celebrated, since 2010, to create awareness for tiger conservation. International Tiger Day was created in 2010 at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia to promote a global system for protecting the natural habitats of the big cats and to raise public awareness and support for tiger conservation issues around the world.
Here's everything you need to know about Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit:
Held between November 21, 2010, and November 24, 2010, it was the first-ever global tiger summit to save the tigers from extinction.
Thirteen tiger-range countries namely India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and host Russia participated in the tiger summit.
The nations and the organisations who had participated in the Tiger Summit, together endorsed a plan known as Global Tiger Recovery Programme to increase the number of wild tigers by double by the year 2022.
Leonardo DiCaprio, the lead actor of titanic movie, donated 1 million US dollars to WWF (World Wildlife Fund) to support tiger conservation during his participation in the Tiger summit.
The Tiger Summit was co-hosted by the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the World Bank President Robert Zoellick.
The global population of free-living tigers today is estimated to be only 3,200–3,500 – living in less than 7 percent of the historic range.
Monique Barbut, CEO Global Environmental Facility GEF, was the only person not representing a government to give a speech.
Russian Prime Minister Putin spoke about wildlife conservation, presenting the tiger as the flagship species for species and nature conservation in general, while Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for a change of the economic model to make it work for the environment.
The goals of the International Tiger Forum were
a) To establish a global system to preserve and restore tigers in the borders of its historical range.
b) To mobilise world public opinion in favour of tigers. Taking the media attention as an indicator, the second goal seems easy to be reached.
To bring fruition to the first goal, the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) developed the Global Tiger Recovery Program.
GTRP intends to empower the Tiger Range States to address the entire range of threats, which were identified to be loss of natural habitats, degradation and fragmentation, depletion of prey animals, and poaching to supply an illegal trade.
The goal of the GTRP is to stabilize tiger numbers within five years and to double them by 2022.
Notably, the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) is an alliance of governments, civil society, international organizations, international agencies and the private sector to save wild tigers from extinction.
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