World Land Trust ups the ante to protect big cats

World Land Trust's Big Cat Big Match sets out to raise money for big cats such as jaguar, which has already benefitted from WLT's protection

As part of its ongoing work to protect big cats, World Land Trust (WLT) is urgently raising money to protect large areas of habitat for species such as tiger, puma, and jaguar.

  WLT’s Big Cat Big Match will take place during the first two weeks of October. During this time, any donations made to the charity’s Big Cat Appeal will be matched pound for pound. So far £250,000 has already been pledged for the match funding pot.

  Funds that will be raised during the Big Cat Big Match will be used to enable WLT’s worldwide partners to extend existing reserves, and create important new wildlife corridors to connect fragmented protected areas. The funds will also support WLT’s Keepers of the Wild Programme, which supports the employment of wildlife rangers in the reserves.

  WLT Chief Executive John Burton commented: “After 25 years of conservation success in countries as diverse as Belize, Paraguay and India, we know that WLT’s model of land purchase and protection is making it possible for big cats to survive in the wild in Latin America and Asia. We aim to raise £500,000 during Big Cat Big Match so that we can continue to support big cat conservation in countries where we already have programmes and in other parts of the world such as Iran and Vietnam, where we are developing exciting new partnerships.”

  WLT’s conservation model is based on purchasing and protecting areas of threatened habitat in partnership with project partners in order to conserve biodiversity and endangered species. They argue that this approach is particularly well suited to the conservation of big cat species, as they are territorial and require large areas of wild habitat and protection from hunters.

  2014 sees the 25th anniversary of the organization. In that time the organization has saved more than 500,000 acres of critically threatened habitat that would have otherwise been lost, working across 20 countries, and the reserves that have been set up by the charity support variety of big cats.

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