LifeForce India - Tiger Conservation is People Conservation

LifeForce is the registered charity based at Satpura Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, India, initiating and supporting tiger conservation programmes.

Why save the tiger?

Some efforts toward saving tigers from extinction focus on moral, aesthetic and/or sentimental reasons as justification for this work. Valid though these reasons may be, there is another very important reason not always mentioned in conservation literature.

The Earth’s remaining forests are essential elements in global life-support systems on which all species, including humans, depend. The health of these forests is indicated by the food web they sustain. Tigers represent the apex of (and therefore ‘complete’, healthy or whole) food webs for most of the forests of India.

Therefore to conserve the tiger is to conserve forest ecosystems which contribute to global life-support systems (as with jaguars in South America, lions in Africa etc). Whilst exotic species might seem distant from our everyday needs, the healthy maintenance of remote ecosystems helps to ensure the maintenance of local ecosystems and hence our own future in terms of availability of clean air, fresh water and the viability of cultivation and animal husbandry.

Why Madhya Pradesh?

The Indian State of Madhya Pradesh is known as the 'Tiger State', holding 20% of the world's remaining tigers.

Madhya Pradesh's Satpura Tiger Reserve is part of one of the largest contiguous blocks of forest left in India and is still (just!) connected to other Reserves by forest 'corridors'. It therefore represents the largest block of tiger-inhabited tiger habitat left in the world. LifeForce conservation initiatives extend beyond Satpura to other Reserves in this block of forest such as Melghat and Pench Tiger Reserves. Current projects will extend to all the other Reserves as funding permits.