By Dr. Corinne Taylor-Smith | Project Leader
It has been a difficult year for fundraising for our education and other projects as the Global cost-of-living crisis continues to hit hard. We haven’t received a single donation towards our education projects since 04 January 2024, so we have been unable to progress our Forest Safety Education programme, which was launched in 2023, beyond the boundaries of Bandhavgarh as we’d hoped. In the last few months, the benefits and need forest safety education have been highlighted with people attacked by elephants and leopards as well as other wildlife. In the last few weeks 5 people were badly injured, 2 of them fatally, when 3 surviving elephants attacked a village in what has been reported as retaliation for the recent fatal poisoning of 10 members of their herd. Forest Safety Education is about keeping the wild elephants, tigers and leopards safe too. Alongside of Forest Safety Education plans we are still committed to providing Education packs for the poorest children living with wild tigers too.
Thank you for taking the time to read this project report, your continued support means the world to us.
Why is Education so important to Wild Tiger Conservation?
This is a question we are often asked when we do talks on wild Tiger Conservation and when we do face to face fundraising. Put simply, education is the only way that wild tigers will have a long-term wild future, without it their future is very bleak. But why? Without education there will be no forest dwellers qualified to become tiger protectors and conservationists but there will be plenty of people who know how to trap and kill the wildlife which raids their crops and kills their livestock, the very animals which compete for the same scarce forest resources. The human population continues to grow and needs more food, without education people don’t know the pressures this causes.
Education plays a critical role in the transformation of rural India, where Bandhavgarh National Park and many other wild tiger territories sit. It addresses socio-economic disparities and fosters sustainable development, something which is vital to preventing the destruction of critical wild tiger habitat. Many villages don’t even have a school whilst others have schools which lack basic facilities such as classrooms, desks, chairs, libraries and sanitation. A lack of electricity and the absence of textbooks and internet access hampers the learning environment, whilst the absence of basic writing materials often prevents children from even attending school. Poverty can mean that families prioritise work over education for their children, which may satiate immediate economic needs but impairs the long-term benefits of education for those children.
Education enhances the employability and income potential for rural children, which in turn contributes to poverty reduction. Educated are more likely to be able to grow up and adopt better agricultural practices and technologies, which will boost productivity without adversely affecting their forest surroundings.
Education Empowers People too
Education empowers people to participate in economic and social activities, it helps to break the cycle of poverty and improves their overall quality of life. Educated people make better informed health decisions and can gain access to healthcare services. Education also raises awareness about hygiene, nutrition and lifestyle choices which foster improved healthier lives. Education helps children to learn about the environment which surrounds them and how to protect it, and the impact this will have on the world around them. Without continued investment in and support for education in these rural communities, sustainable development and socio-economic growth will be impossible which could spell disaster for the long-term survival of wild tigers and their forest home. If you can help us to secure a long-term future for wild tigers through education, please donate whatever you can afford as soon as possible as tomorrow may be too late. https://goto.gg/32565.
All Tigers4Ever projects have interdependencies as our unique 3-pronged approach to ensure that wild tigers will have a wild future is effected and involves the communities who live with wild tigers and who want to ensure that wild tigers survive too. Without support from the wider tiger community, our efforts to protect the wild tigers and their precious forest habitat would all be in vain. Our projects to reduce human-wildlife conflict, our anti-poaching patrols and our education projects are all vital to ensuring that wild tigers have a wild future living harmoniously alongside the people whose ancestors have been guardians of the forest in the past centuries. At the beginning of the 20th century, 100000 wild tigers roamed the earth living alongside 1.65 billion people with both giving the other space to thrive. In 2024, there are only 5574 wild tigers and an estimated 8.1 billion humans with much less space for the wildlife to roam.
If humans and wild animals can’t live alongside each other in harmony, then the future for wild tigers is very bleak. This is why forest safety education and school education are priorities alongside everything else we do. In addition, we need more solutions to address the increase in human-wildlife conflict which threatens to undermine the success we have had to date in boosting wild tiger numbers!
Local Children can be Future Tiger Protectors
When thinking about wild tigers it is easy to forget that the current generation of conservationists and tiger protectors won’t be around forever. If we want wild tigers to be around forever, we need to plan for their future too. We can’t forget about the thousands of children living alongside wild tigers, because we need them to become the next generation of wild tiger protectors. Without education, it will be almost impossible for them as the children will become dependent on the land and forest to survive, cutting down more trees to create more firewood and farmland without knowing the impact of their actions.
We need to help these children now, before it is too late. In 2024, we have given educational opportunities to just 100 children living alongside wild tigers (compared to 820 in 2023) and with our Forest Safety Education programme we have helped the people of 105 villages to be safe when encountering wildlife too. Our anti-poaching patrolling Team continues to deliver safety education talks and resources to the people they encounter in the forest with the hope of keeping both them and the wildlife safe.
The biggest threats to life for wildlife and humans in Bandhavgarh still come from four main species: Tigers, Elephants, Snakes and Leopards. Sloth bear attacks are less frequent and are rarely like the one at the end of 2023 which resulted in many casualties and deaths from a single sloth bear’s attack. Recently, we have been in discussions with an Indian based Charity, the Corbett Foundation, to share our Forest Safety Education materials and share their safety information on sloth bear encounters. This sharing of resources and workload will help to ensure best use of precious funds and ensure that Forest Safety Education can reach a wider audience too. As recent events have shown, people will still try to poison wild animals including elephants, wild tigers and their cubs, or demand that they be captured and put into zoos, none of which are good for elephants, tigers or their offspring.
As mentioned above, we still want to help the poorest rural children living around Bandhavgarh, so we’ll try to raise sufficient funds to enable the maximum number of children to go to school. This will give them the best chance of becoming future wild tiger protectors rather than the devastating alternative of destroyers of the precious forest habitat which wild tigers and their prey so desperately need. Now there are more tigers and more elephants living in and around Bandhavgarh, the risk of retaliatory attacks on wildlife is too high for us not to prioritise forest safety education and anti-poaching patrols! By ensuring the people know how to protect themselves and keep wildlife safe, we hope that such attacks and human-wildlife conflict will reduce.
It would be amazing to know that you’ve helped us to keep thousands of wild animals safe thanks to our latest education projects, would it not?
If you want to help us provide essential education training and resources, your gift today will make a huge difference: https://goto.gg/32565
The Record so Far
We have helped 3400 children living with wild tigers in 34 villages gain access to education, so we still have a lot more to do. Thousands of children desperately need your help too! On 03 December 2024 it will be GivingTuesday, and it would be amazing if all our supporters could spare £15/$15/€15 or 15 or more of your own currency in honour of this special day and wild tigers:https://goto.gg/32565. We want to ensure that the future generations of Bandhavgarh will protect the forest and its wild tigers as our team in India and our anti-poaching patrols do now. To do this, we need your help to fund vital education resources today. For every £1400 (US$1900) we raise, we can provide educational resources for 450 children living with wild tigers to give them the best chance of becoming the next generation of tiger protectors in Bandhavgarh. (https://goto.gg/32565).
Your support for our work is amazing. We definitely couldn’t keep wild tigers safe without it. We hope that we can provide a brighter future for some of Bandhavgarh’s poorest children and future generations of wild tigers. Please support our education projects in Bandhavgarh by starting a new monthly recurring donation from just £5 (US$8) per month, if you can, as it will make a huge difference each year: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/education-saves-tigers/?show=recurring. It is never too late to make a difference
In Bandhavgarh, for the thousands of young children with no access to schooling, without computers or mobile phones, without electricity in their homes, a bleak future awaits. These are the children who Tigers4Ever has always tried to help with books and basic writing materials to give them hope. With your help we can give them a chance which otherwise they may not have. Remember: when we provide education packs and scholarships for children living with wild tigers, we reduce the risk of future tiger habitat destruction AND ensure that these children will have a chance to become tiger protectors in future.
Thank you for your generosity and support on behalf of the wild tigers, which we are keeping safe; on behalf of the children who we have helped to get an education (and their families who have food because of this help); and on behalf of the wider tiger community in Bandhavgarh, which benefits from providing books and writing materials for inclusion in the education packs which we distribute; and also the safety education training materials we are using.
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By Dr. Corinne Taylor-Smith | Project Leader
By Dr. Corinne Taylor-Smith | Project Leader
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