The Year of the Tiger has begun. Across China, tiger merchandise is the rage. In India, celebrities are throwing their weight behind calls to save the real tiger. A flurry of conservation meetings has taken place, Internet groups have sprung up, and the media this past week has been full of tigers. There is an all-around glow of good intentions – and it is welcome, because the life of wild tigers hangs by a slender thread.

Ministers and officials from 13 Asian countries ended a meeting last week in Hua Hin with a pledge to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger. The meeting, hosted by Thailand, included experts from non-government organisations like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Prerna Singh Bindra speaks with Bittu Sahgal about his views on conservation, climate change, and India's future.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. – Charles Darwin 

I love dogs. The ones in my home; the ones on India’s mean streets; the wild ones that run chital and sambar down in deep forests and the ones that started it all, the ultimate top dogs – wolves, Canis lupus.

Only someone who has seen a tiger in the wild can possibly understand the weightless joy that pervades the soul when one condescends to reveal itself in its forest.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an honourable man. And he would probably be just as moved as you or I at the sight of this strapping, young tiger striding across a path in Corbett, among the few safe havens left in India. The difference between Dr. Singh and the rest of us is that he would probably add: “I too want tigers saved, but I have a greater responsibility to the people of this country and must leave the task of saving tigers to the forest guards you see in the imag

After a decade of denial by wildlife officials, the truth is out. Wild tigers are being taken down. According to the National Tiger Conservation Authority, we have lost half of all wild tigers that existed in India less than five years ago. Even granting that five years ago, the number of tigers was nowhere near what Project Tiger had been claiming, today’s figures are nothing short of depressing. A combination of habitat destruction and a revitalised international wildlife

I cannot think of a single life form on Earth that has a net negative impact on the health of the planet; can you?