Together we can!

Bittu Sahgal

Children are the most powerful agents of positive, environmental change. They not only have the legitimacy, but the fire to actually take the small and large actions vital to the task of reversing the ecological rot that adults have in mind for the planet. Let me share one example with you of how a young girl set into motion a movement that has motivated over a million other young persons like her to save the tiger.

Just over a decade ago, I sat talking to representatives of the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA), UK about how children around the world had rallied around the tiger in the early 1970s and how they had gathered both money and signatures to save the tiger. It was to a large extent this show of will and force on the part of young persons that convinced our government, then headed by the late Mrs Indira Gandhi, to launch Project Tiger. In bits and pieces, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) collected money from these kids and then asked adults to do the right thing and add their strength to the campaign. The net result was a collection of one million dollars, the seed money for launching the most ambitious conservation project in the world.

Debbie Banks, a young activist who seems to live only to save tigers, then told me about a 15-year-old girl called Jenny Osgood who was very sick with aggravated asthma and who had collected 7,000 signatures (one for every tiger alive) from the citizens of Cornwall in the south-west of England. The Cornish are reputed to be quite local in their outlook and her family worried that Jenny might be disappointed. But this did not dissuade her. She went ahead and distributed petition forms to shops, gas stations, schools and in fact to anyone who agreed to help. The response was fantastic.
Kids for Tigers along with NDTV's Prannoy Roy meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Touched by her trust and her love for a distant and endangered animal, I suggested immediately that she be asked to travel to India to meet the Prime Minister and personally hand over these signatures to him on the occasion of National Wildlife Week 1997. She and her mother did come. At that time our Prime Minister was I. K. Gujral and he did meet her, together with many Indian children who had collected signatures of their own. And P. K. Sen, Director of Project Tiger and several members of Project Tiger's Steering Committee spent time with her too.

When asked why she came on this long journey even though she was very unwell, in very simple words Jenny Osgood replied: "Can you imagine a world without tigers? I know I can't. Yet nowadays, like so many species all over the Earth, tigers stand at the brink of extinction because of poaching and the destruction of their habitat. If the human race cannot care enough to save the tiger, how can we ever care enough to save the rest of life on Earth? I just had to do more than send a donation. India is home to approximately two thirds of the world's remaining tigers but at least one of these is killed every single day. So, I came up with the idea of organising a petition to the Prime Minister of India. I am still not sure what the end result will be, but if I had not bothered to collect these signatures, quite a lot of people who I stopped in the High Street would still be completely unaware that tigers are in such danger."

There are so many Jenny Osgoods in this world. I know because I meet them every day here in India. They ask nothing of us adults other than a little encouragement and perhaps our understanding. The ten year olds who signed a million signatures to save the tiger in 1970 are now in their late twenties. But the cat they helped to save is now in danger again. It is time a new lot of young ones were encouraged to rise in defence of the tiger.

In the first quarter of 2008, Sanctuary magazine teamed up with NDTV to collect one million signatures for the tiger. NDTV (for five years, through Born Wild) and Sanctuary (for over the past three decades through the magazine and more recently through the one-million-strong Kids for Tigers network that is now supported by TCS) have worked together in the past to raise public support for the tiger, but nothing in our experience is comparable to the current crisis. Both of us knew we had to do something different. The tiger was faltering and India looked like she would sleep through the entire tragedy.

For the first time ever, thanks to one of the most visible public crusades seen in India, villagers, tribals, urban dwellers, children and their parents, artists, government officials, politicians - virtually everyone rich or poor - voiced their united determination to save the tiger.

The children that the NDTV Tiger Campaign contacted through the length and breadth of India would probably outshine any Member of Parliament in a debate on the connection between deforestation and climate change. They would also stand taller than most politicians and businessmen on any moral platform. Put simply, adults have let down the children so far. But, fortunately, it is still not too late to redeem ourselves. Well protected, politically supported and sensibly managed, the tiger forests of India could spring back to life within a short span of a decade and the tiger population, now hovering around 1,000, could rise to three or five times that number because nature knows how to repair and manage itself - if only we stop harming it.

Perhaps, it would be appropriate to leave one of our Kids for Tigers, young Devanshu Sood of the Sri Ram School, who accompanied Prannoy Roy and a delegation of young kids to the Prime Minister's house, with the last word. He said: "It was a big occasion for us to present half-a-million signatures to our Prime Minister. We pointed out that though saving the tiger is a Central Government responsibility, in his capacity as head of the National Wildlife Board, we wanted him to personally instruct all Chief Ministers to accept responsibility for the tigers in their states. We also asked that armed guards be employed to protect India's sanctuaries and that our intelligence agencies be used to fight the wildlife trade. He assured us that he would do all this and more and we are going to hold him to his promise!"

Together we CAN save the tiger. To be part of the 'Kids for Tigers' initiative, pledge your support for the tiger, or to support specific tiger campaigns write to:
Kids for Tigers
146, Pragati Industrial Estate
N.M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai