Washington (PTI): In order to save tigers from extinction, The Smithsonian Institution and the World Bank Group has announced a global initiative across the 13 countries, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, China and Russia, to help stabilise and restore their population.

The new Conservation and Development Network will seek to strengthen and expand a patchy system of tiger reserves across these countries by linking the leading knowledge institutions of these Tiger Range countries with globally significant centers of excellence in conservation science and professional training.

The Development Network, set up under an agreement signed on Friday, will train hundreds of forest rangers other habitat managers in the latest cutting-edge practices in biodiversity management.

The World Bank will dedicate more than $1 million over the next year toward these training efforts, and the Smithsonian and World Bank will work to expand the alliance to include other members and raise additional financing for implementation.

"We are very pleased to join with the Smithsonian in this important and innovative new effort. Without urgent action, the tiger could be extinct within the next 10 years," World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick said.

"...Working together, we can unite hundreds of conservation practitioners and dozens of institutions across the tiger range countries of Asia to arrest the terrible loss of tiger populations and bring these magnificent species back from the brink," he added.

"Combining the Smithsonian’s scientific and conservation expertise with the World Bank’s 60-plus years of development knowledge will allow us to build a global network of leading scientists, policy makers and NGOs with the critical goal of saving the wild tiger." G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said.

The World Bank believes that the training will lead to more effective measures against illegal trade and trafficking of tiger parts, and intensify surveillance, detection and conviction of poachers.

In addition to promoting stricter implementation of conservation laws and laws against illegal trade and traffic, the network should allow countries to more efficiently share information about poaching activity, leading to more robust efforts to combat the problem, it said.