Representatives from China, India, Russia, and 10 other Asian nations have pledged to double the population of wild tigers within a decade through stricter enforcement of poaching laws and efforts to protect the wild cats’ habitat. The leaders, however, committed no money to the conservation efforts, but instead agreed to work with global institutions like the World Bank to develop schemes to use money from ecotourism, carbon financing, and infrastructure projects to fund tiger restoration. Conservationists called the 13-nation agreement an important step in protecting the wild cats, whose 
numbers have plummeted in recent decades as human encroachment has eliminated more than nine-tenths of their habitat. Experts say there are fewer than 3,500 wild tigers today, compared to an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. Hailing the agreement, Michael Baltzer, head of the WWF Tiger Initiative, said “There never has been a high-level government commitment to take forward tiger conservation.” The meeting was organized by Thailand and the Global Tiger Initiative, a coalition formed by the World Bank, the Smithsonian Institute, and several conservation groups. The final plan must be approved by government leaders at a September meeting in Russia.
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