Tiger Trail Project Archives - Entrepreneurs with Denis Oakley

Entrepreneurs with Denis Oakley

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Tiger Trail Project

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What is Tiger Trail?

What is Tiger Trail?What is Tiger Trail? Tiger Trail is a side project of mine that is intended to reverse a lot of the damage that humans have caused to the rainforest in South East Asia. Over the last 20,000 years we have killed the majority of the large animals who used to live in the SE Asian rainforests and jungles. We have also cut down vast amounts of it and turned the land over to farming or plantation agriculture.

This has had a huge impact on humans enabling them to become wealthy through systematic resource extraction – both as hunter gatherers and as large scale forestry concerns. We have wonderful furniture, shampoos and car tyres and sexual prowess (apparently from bits of tigers etc). The animals and plants have not done so well.

Tiger Trail is a Plan to Restore The South East Asian Rainforest

What is Tiger Trail? Tiger Trail is a plan to reverse all that. A lot of current environmental efforts are focused on conservation. Let’s save the Tiger. Let’s save the rainforest. However There are two problems with this. Low species population numbers mean that many species cannot have healthy lives as their natural ranges are now too small. The populations will become genetically weak – or like the mammoths on their small siberian island go extinct.

The other problem is that it is a counsel of despair.

“Let’s try to save a little of what we have left”

Phaw. Let’s go the opposite way and look for ways that we can restore what we have to what it was. This comes for my experience as an entrepreneur. We have a big problem so we should be looking for big solutions. We should be looking at an outcome that is amazingly positive for the animals and plants (and humans) rather than one just a little bit less shitty than the absolute shittiest.

Reforest, Renew, Repopulate

So the vision is to reforest much of south east asia. Not only is it to reforest the area – it is to renew the ecosystems that have been damaged and destroyed. When 100,000 species can live in a single tree in the Malaysia forest – how many delicate balances are destroyed every time we log an areas the size of a football field? Finally as we try and work out how to renew the ecosystems we need to repopulate the forests so that they have animal and plant populations that are sufficient to support the whole ecosystem. Neither too few tigers, nor too many.

Find Projects That Work – Deliver on A Massive Scale

So then what is Tiger Trail? Tiger Trail is a rallying cry to environmentalists and entrepreneurs to look for ways to radically disrupt the usage and abusage of the rainforest in South East Asia. It is a call for ideas that can have a powerful impact and then the ability to scale them up from 1 acre test projects to schemes that will have a massive positive effect on 50,000 r 500,000 acres. The goal is to thing big and to make big changes.

We have some good ideas on how we can do this and how we can finance the changes that we are looking for. If you are interested in Learning more please head over to our page on FaceBook or leave a comment below.

 

 

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Using Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Mapping to Protect the Malaysian Jungle – and Tigers

DSC_0983I spend a lot of time in the jungle in Malaysia. It’s wonderful to get out there and run along the trails and feel the stresses of working life dissolve as the sweat rushes out of your body. It’s also great to spend an afternoon chilling with friends in a mountain stream.

Two things really irritate me. The first is that the jungle is being cut down. The second is that people like medicine made out of tigers so lots of tigers get killed. The other day this boiled to the surface a bit when someone asked on Quora “What are the best souvenirs to bring back from Malaysia?” I replied Tiger Paw, and was promptly accused of trolling, and then clawed the poor person who made the accusation.

It’s a big problem. The country is large, much of it remote, and there’s a lot of money to be made so many of the enforcement mechanisms could be stronger. Many people in Malaysia are also apathetic saying that not much can be done.

At the same time lots of people love going into the jungle. Mountain bikers, hashers, trail runners (like me), 4×4 drivers, trekkers and of course the orang asli. A few friends and I have been mulling this over for a few years now – how can we find a way to protect the jungle in a really collaborative way, so that everyone works in their own self interest, doing something small, but the net result is pretty huge.

We’re going to reach out to all these people going into the jungle and get them to send us photos and gps tracks of where they go. We’re then going to create maps of the jungle using this data on a collaborative mapping platform. This will be an information source for governments and NGOs but at the same time it will encourage more people and more eyes to be reporting on what is happening making it harder for the jungle to be ruined.

Trekkers go into the jungle and map it – just as they do with driving apps like Waze.

Volunteers Map Editors edit and update the maps – probably based on Open Street Map

NGOs and Government Agencies benefit from improved data quality about endangered habitats and species

The Environment benefits from a large volunteer community monitoring and reporting it’s health

Tigers benefit because there are many more people out there looking for threats

Long term the goal is to develop a network of long distance footpaths, like the US Appalachian Trail and use that to leverage the UN into declaring the range a UNESCO world heritage site

We’re going to start it off looking at Malaysia’s Titiwangsa range but the whole architecture will be designed to be scalable so that it can be deployed in other countries where there are similar issues.

It will work well for Malaysia because of the good combination of sports enthusiasts and accessibility to much of the jungle – it is long and thin – the lack of extreme poverty and the presence of photogenic animals to leverage public attention and generate enthusiasm among map editors for the work.

If you’re interested in find out more of supporting us send us an email. It’s a part time evening project and there’s a lot to do to get it off the ground

(and if you do fancy hiking the Apalachian Trail check out this guide by my friends Mila and Mark)

Using Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Mapping to Protect the Malaysian Jungle - and Tigers