Global Tiger Innovation Fund

WWF-Australia's Global Tiger Innovation Fund has announced the first round of conservation funding. Let's take a look at the recipients. This first-of-its-kind fund for tigers aims to support innovative approaches to overcome the unique conservation challenges faced in tiger landscapes.

The Role of the Global Tiger Innovation Fund

Tigers are keystone species, playing a critical role in maintaining the health of the ecosystems they inhabit. Protecting tiger landscapes helps conserve forests, freshwater systems and biodiversity that millions of people depend upon. Traditional conservation funding has helped drive tiger recovery, but many barriers to long-term success remain unresolved. The Global Tiger Innovation Fund was created to test bold new approaches to help tigers recover, support community-defined priorities and build more resilient landscapes for people and wildlife.

The fund supports promising ideas that have the potential to transform tiger conservation but need investment to be tested, refined and scaled. These innovations build on decades of successful conservation efforts that have helped drive the recovery of tiger populations across Asia. Successful innovations aim to move beyond short-term pilots – becoming practical tools, financing models and community-led approaches that can be embedded in tiger recovery efforts over time. GTIF’s unique role is to bridge the gap between promising ideas and large-scale conservation impact, generating evidence for approaches that can be adopted, financed and scaled across tiger landscapes.

We are delighted to share the five programs funded through GTIF’s first round. Selected through a competitive process, these projects were chosen for their potential to tackle key barriers to tiger recovery, strengthen coexistence, and test approaches that respond to community priorities and can be sustained and adapted across tiger landscapes.

Addressing Conservation Challenges

Tigers face complex and interconnected challenges today, including habitat destruction and fragmentation, poaching, and human-wildlife conflict. Tiger recovery depends on more than increasing tiger numbers. While tiger populations have started to recover over the last decade, tigers are still listed as Endangered and long-term recovery isn't guaranteed. In some places, tiger recovery has also created real costs and challenges for people living alongside wildlife.

Protecting tigers into the future requires innovative and locally led approaches that support people and wildlife to coexist, respond to community-defined priorities, and build resilience across tiger landscapes. It also requires sustainable financing, underpinned by strong governance, policy and political commitment, to support long-term conservation and community-defined outcomes.

Our Vision for 2034

By 2034, we aim to ensure that wild tiger populations and their habitats are stable or increasing across 22 landscapes within their existing and historic ranges.

Protecting tigers also benefits hundreds of other globally threatened species and millions of people by preserving critical landscapes and natural resources. Thriving tiger populations are an indicator of ecosystem health and resilience, and their habitats store an impressive 19 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to half of the annual global emissions. Innovations tested under this fund could also have potential beyond tiger ranges for other large carnivore programs. 

The Funding Recipients

These potentially game-changing approaches are being piloted from July 2026 - June 2028.

Realtime Integrated Knowledge on Habitat and Animals-Network (RiKhaNET)

An innovative technology initiative in Bhutan that uses AI, real-time sensors and predictive analytics to support safer coexistence between humans and tigers.

• Lead partner: DHI Bhutan

• Key partners: Department of Forests and Park Services of Bhutan, WWF-Bhutan.

• Country: Bhutan

For communities living in tiger landscapes, understanding tiger movements through shared landscapes is a crucial part of coexistence. RiKhaNET brings together existing wildlife and habitat monitoring data to predict where human-wildlife conflict is most likely to occur. By transforming this information into early warning alerts and risk maps, the system helps rangers and communities anticipate conflict before it happens. This shift from reactive response to proactive prevention aims to protect lives, livelihoods and tigers, reducing livestock losses, improving safety and strengthening confidence in coexistence across conflict-prone rural landscapes.

RiKhaNET is distinctive because it is codesigned, governed and operated with local communities and government partners. Rangers, gewog (local government) leaders and community members help shape how information is collected, shared and used to support decision-making. Developed in partnership with Bhutanese innovation hubs, RiKhaNET is also strengthening national capacity in conservation technology and directly supporting Bhutan’s National Tiger Action Plan.

If successful, RiKhaNET could position Bhutan as a global leader in community-centred, AI-enabled wildlife management. The project could help demonstrate how technology, local leadership and community participation can together support coexistence, offering lessons for other landscapes facing similar human-wildlife conflict challenges.

Bhutan Tiger Impact Certificate

One of the world’s first species-specific finance models in a human-tiger conflict hotspot, designed to link successful tiger conservation with coexistence outcomes and community priorities.

• Lead partner: WWF Bhutan

• Key partners: Tiger Conservation Coalition

• Country: Bhutan

The Tiger Impact Certificate (TIC) is an innovative finance mechanism designed to create a direct link between successful tiger conservation, coexistence outcomes and community priorities. As Bhutan’s tiger population has grown, so too has human–tiger conflict, particularly in Nubi Gewog, where livestock losses are placing increasing pressure on rural livelihoods. This project is testing a new way to align investment in tiger recovery with coexistence outcomes and community priorities. Each TIC represents independently verified improvements for biodiversity, coexistence outcomes – such as reduced livestock losses and increased tolerance for tigers – and community-prioritised social outcomes, offering buyers a credible and transparent way to support both tiger recovery and the wellbeing of people living alongside tigers.

Revenue from Bhutan’s certificates will support coexistence measures such as predator‑proof livestock shelters and livelihood diversification, helping to build long-term tolerance for tigers. The Bhutan TIC stands out because of its integrated community-led design, governance, benefit‑sharing and grievance mechanisms, ensuring that those bearing the cost of coexistence also share in its rewards.

If successful, the pilot could provide a scalable model for tiger landscapes across Asia, while positioning Bhutan as a global frontrunner in equitable, community-driven biodiversity finance. Prototype certificates are expected to be issued by 2027.

Salakpra Tiger Impact Certificate

A biodiversity finance mechanism that connects corporate capital to verified tiger recovery and community-defined benefits in Thailand’s Salakpra landscape.

• Lead partner: Zoological Society of London

• Key partners: WWF, Panthera & Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), communities

• Country: Thailand

Building on similar principles of the Bhutan Tiger Impact Certificate (TIC), the Salakpra TIC uses outcome-based finance to link investment to successful tiger conservation and community-defined outcomes. However, it differs in its focus on corporate buyers and alignment with emerging global sustainability reporting frameworks. The certificate links investment to independently verified improvements for tigers, their prey and habitat, as well as social outcomes that are defined and prioritised by the communities. Local communities around Salakpra landscape will help shape how success is measured, how decisions are made and how benefits are shared, while also playing an active role in monitoring progress. With a strong emphasis on participation by women, youth and marginalised groups, embedding meaningful community participation and leadership throughout the project. By aligning conservation outcomes with emerging global disclosure frameworks – including Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive – the pilot makes tiger conservation auditable, reportable and investable. It aims to offer a transparent and credible way for businesses to invest in nature and demonstrate measurable biodiversity impact beyond offsets.

If successful, the Salakpra pilot will become a flagship proof‑of‑concept for scaling Tiger Impact Certificates across tiger range countries, positioning tiger landscapes as global leaders in equitable, outcome‑based biodiversity finance.

Tiger Reintroduction Outcome Bond

Laying the groundwork for Thailand’s first large‑scale tiger reintroduction through an innovative finance model that supports long-term coexistence and tiger recovery.

• Lead partner: Conservation Capital

• Key partners: King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), WCS, Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, WWF-Thailand, Panthera

• Country: Thailand

Conservation science has shown tiger reintroductions can succeed, creating new opportunities to restore tigers to landscapes where they have been lost. However, there is currently no scalable financing model that supports the long-term conservation management and community partnerships needed to make these reintroductions succeed. This project is testing an innovative finance mechanism that provides investors with returns based on whether verified conservation and community-defined goals are achieved.

The project is laying the environmental, social and financial foundations needed to safely reintroduce tigers safely to the Phu Khieo-Nam Nao landscape in the next decade. At the heart of the approach is a Community Coexistence Fund, which invests in locally-identified community priorities when conservation milestones are achieved. By linking investment to both conservation and community outcomes, the fund aims to ensure local communities play a central role in shaping and sharing the opportunities associated with tiger recovery.

Through social surveys and engagement with surrounding villages, the project will assess attitudes towards tigers, identify potential concerns and help inform coexistence and benefit-sharing mechanisms well in advance of tiger reintroduction. This proactive approach aims to strengthen community support, build resilience and create the conditions needed for long-term coexistence.

If successful, this could provide a blueprint for financing tiger reintroductions across south-east Asia, demonstrating how innovative finance can align public, private and community interests to restore tigers while supporting locally identified priorities and long-term coexistence.

Community-Managed Tiger Habitats in the Western Ghats–Nilgiris Landscape

Pioneering a community‑led biodiversity finance model linked to invasive species removal and habitat restoration in a significant global biodiversity hotspot.

• Lead partner: WWF-India

• Key partners: Value Network Ventures, TAMS – Talavady Adhivasigal Munnetra Sangham, Forest Department, Gram Sabha, Wild Carbon, Ecological Restoration Alliance

• Country: India

The initiative addresses a major barrier to tiger recovery, the spread of one of the world’s most invasive weeds, Lantana camara. This densely-growing shrub degrades tiger habitat, reduces essential food sources for wildlife and increases human-wildlife conflict by pushing wildlife closer to human settlements. This project is developing a new way to generate biodiversity credits through invasive species removal and habitat restoration. By restoring habitat quality and reducing pressures that can push wildlife closer to settlements, the approach seeks to improve outcomes for people and wildlife. Revenue from these credits can help support community priorities and livelihoods while strengthening the capacity of local institutions to lead invasive species management, habitat restoration and innovative conservation finance initiatives.

The project builds on years of collaboration between WWF‑India and Talavady Adhivasigal Munnetra Sangham (TAMS), an organisation led by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Together, they have supported local communities to secure Community Resource Rights under India’s Forest Rights Act (2006). These rights empower communities to play a leading role in managing and protecting forests, creating the foundation for long-term stewardship of wildlife and habitats. Community groups are already restoring degraded forests, removing invasive lantana and developing community‑owned enterprises that link restoration to livelihoods.

The project aims to demonstrate how community-led restoration can strengthen livelihoods, build more resilient landscapes, support prey populations and improve outcomes for tigers. If successful, it could offer a replicable blueprint for community‑led habitat restoration across India’s tiger landscapes that suffer from the invasive Lantana camara.

Join Us in Making a Difference

We've committed an initial $1.5 million (~USD $1 million) to kick-start the Global Tiger Innovation Fund and invest in the first round of solutions. We’re inviting partners, governments, philanthropists and innovators to collaborate with us to grow the fund and multiply our initial investment. Together, we can support new approaches that strengthen coexistence, build resilience across tiger landscapes, and contribute to long-term tiger recovery.

The Global Tiger Innovation Fund applies lessons learned across tiger landscapes and helps test, adapt and scale promising ideas. Designed and governed by WWF offices across Asia and Australia, it is focused on supporting innovation that responds to locally defined priorities and is shaped by communities and partners living and working in tiger landscapes.

The first funding round for the Global Tiger Innovation Fund is now closed. If you'd like to discuss future opportunities to contribute to this ambitious fund, please reach out to us at GTIF@wwf.org.au.