Big Cat Conservation: A Global Alliance

Dear Donor,

Thank you for your continued support which enables us to bring Western and Indigenous knowledge systems together for big cat conservation. We know there are many ways you can choose to spend your money and we appreciate that you chose to support us.

This quarter, we weren’t focused on one particular big cat, but were actively connecting with a number of our partners.

Jaguars: We were able to bring two Jaguar Indigenous Cultural Practitioners together during a meeting of our organization—one a Mixteca from Mexico and the other a Yawanawa from Brazil. From previous reports, you might recall that the vision of our partners is to create a corridor of protection that extends from Brazil through Central and South America into North America. Because of poaching activities, this continues to remain a challenge, so meetings like these to exchange ideas and resources are critical. Both have returned to their homelands with new ideas and inspiration for new projects to continue with these efforts.

Tigers: We are also working on plans to bring a small delegation to China in early 2020 to attend a tiger dance festival in the southern region. We will bring Snow Leopard cultural practitioners with us from Central Asia, and our hope is that they can connect with the Tiger cultural practitioners. The struggles they face are similar—less territory for these sacred animals means they hunt in areas close to humans. Humans, through fear, greed and other reasons, kill or poach the animals to either protect their own livestock or for a price (for bones, pelts, etc.) It’s a struggle around the world and it’s why we are doing what we are doing—trying to find new ways of supporting life.

We will send more updates on the progress of these various projects soon and we thank you again for your kind and generous support.