A wildlife veterinary group from the district has launched a £100,000 project to save tigers from being killed by frightened villagers in Bangladesh.

Keighley-based Wildlife Vets International will use the money to employ a full-time vet at the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh.

The cash will also pay for more training in how to deal with tigers coming into contact with humans. And it will pay for a disease prevention programme designed to protect wild tigers from serious infectious diseases caused by domestic dogs and cats.

Dr John Lewis, a specialist big cat vet and director of WVI, said: “If we can carry on this critical work, we can also show villagers that there is an alternative to killing straying tigers.

“We also want to help prevent spread of infectious disease into this tiger population, and a potential repeat of the epidemic of canine distemper and rabies from local dogs that wiped out a third of lions in Africa’s Serengeti national park in the mid-1990s.”

The launch follows the recent killing of a female tiger, beaten to death on the edge of the Sundarbans forest by frightened villagers, just three weeks after it was rescued from the same fate by a conservation programme.

  • Read the full story in Monday's T&A