16 Jan. 2007

WPSI’s Wildlife Awareness Campaign for Tibetans has received an overwhelming response in the large Tibetan settlements in South India. In January this year, thousands of people gathered at the Sera Je Monastery, in the Tibetan Refugee Settlement of Bylakuppe in Karnataka, to attend the Hayagriva Initiation by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. On 11 January 2007, the Wildlife Protection Society of India used the occasion to conduct a Wildlife Awareness Campaign to an audience of more than 8,500 Tibetans. Our Project Officer, Mr. Ngawang Rabgyal, gave a presentation, showed a film and distributed thousands of brochures on the occasion.

The Tibetan-language WPSI brochure - which urges Tibetan people not to encourage the illegal trade in tiger, leopard and otter skins and the trade in raw shahtoosh wool - was also widely distributed during the last day of the Dalai Lama’s teachings on 12 January 2007.

Interestingly, we have also learnt that text and photographs from WPSI's campaign brochure have been reprinted in an education magazine published by one of the biggest Khampa monasteries in Tibet, Sejey in Sichuan Province.