2015 in terms of tigers …

Thank you so much for all your support for TigerTime this year – with your help it’s been truly memorable!

We kicked off the year with a wonderful comedy line-up at our ‘Stand up for Tigers’ event and along with your fabulous contributions to our Stars & Stripes Celebrity auction staged at the Mall Galleries, London we once again helped raise awareness and funds for wild tigers.

We continued to raise funds and spread the word for wild tigers through our GlobalGiving #ROAR campaign which you helped tweet across the globe and the wonderful Born And Bred t-shirt collaboration with UK Rock Band Young Guns was a fabulous boost for tigers too!

In June, the amazing Spice Girl Melanie C, joined us on her first tiger trip to India. Lucky wasn’t the word as we enjoyed the story of an incredible family of tigers unfold before our eyes. Melanie’s trip hit the headlines and the film footage gives us ongoing opportunities to keep our campaigns going!

Thank you too goes to British Designer, Elizabeth Emanuel and Californian-based photographer Suzi Eszterhas, who both contributed to our new Bengal tiger adoption which is selling brilliantly!!! 

Thank you also to all our supporters who fundraise through their businesses and hobbies for us including: Tamsin Ball, Paul Hale, Alan Seymour, Richard Symonds, Florence Wilson, Melanie at Casper Glass, the Youngsie team, Tiger Scaffolding, Jungle Tattoo supplies and Michael Vickers.

With the highs came one disappointment – that we didn’t manage to engage 500,000 people on our bantigertrade.com campaign This would have been a fabulous boost as we head into 2016 and a really tough chapter for tigers as China’s chairmanship of the Asian Big Cats Working Group at CITES (the organization that regulates trade in endangered flora and fauna) threatens to ignore vital revisions and recommendations that would help regulate the captive breeding and trade in tigers. Rest assured we’ll be making some noise and fighting this as hard as we can!

On a happier note we have managed to raise the £100,000 that we need each year to fund our tiger conservation work in India, Thailand and Russia – but we would so love to do more! Happy news too that following the census in Russia it looks like Amur tiger numbers on the up due to improved protection and more stringent laws to protect them.

And, in a conservation first, we end the year, so fittingly, with a fairy tale of Cinderella…

There aren’t many happy stories in tiger conservation but the tale of one Amur tiger has captured our hearts this Christmas.

Found orphaned in 2012, her mother presumed killed by poachers, a 5 month old Amur cub was rescued. Frozen and suffering from frostbite Zolushka (Russian for Cinderella)

Was exhausted by her ordeal her chances of survival were slim. But with expert help and generous donations from TigerTime supporters and a coalition of NGOs began to recover. She grew strong and healthy and was taught to hunt and it was decided that she would be ready for release back into the wild in the spring of 2013.

On May 9, 2013 Cinderella was released in the Bastak Nature Reserve. Monitored closely for the first few weeks good news started to flow. She had been seen hunting successfully and hopes were high for her continued survival. In January 2014 camera traps pictured Cinderella and a male Amur tiger – she had met her Prince Charming!

Roaming free in a protected area, hunting successfully and seen in the company of other tigers, Cinderella’s story seemed too good to be true. And then the amazing news was confirmed that she was a mother!

Having followed the story of this little, lost cub from the beginning, seeing her healthy and free and as a mother has been one of the most rewarding tiger conservation stories we’ve ever been part of. So thank you for helping make this possible.

Sadly, this isn’t the end of Cinderella’s story. With two small cubs to protect through the freezing Russian winter she will need all her skills to keep them alive and the unfailing protection of the rangers who brave sub-zero temperatures to keep the poachers at bay.

Your continued support in 2016 will help us support the team in Russia and with as few as 450 Amur tigers left in the wild protecting them has never been more important.

Thank you again for being part of TigerTime in 2015 and we hope you’ll be involved again in 2016.

We couldn’t do it without you!