• Nepal has officially joined the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) by signing the Framework Agreement on August 23.

• With snow leopard, tiger and common leopard in its landscape, Nepal’s joining the IBCA will strengthen global collaboration for big cat conservation.

• Nepal succeeded to almost triple its tiger population to 355 in 2022 (the latest census carried out so far) from a mere 121 in 2009.

What is IBCA?

• The IBCA was launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on April 9, 2023, during the event ‘Commemorating 50 years of Project Tiger’. 

• The Union Cabinet, in its meeting held on February 29, 2024, approved the establishment of IBCA with headquarters in India. 

• It was launched with the aim of conservation of seven big cats — tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar and puma — with membership of all UN countries/the range countries harbouring the said species and non-range countries where historically these species are not found but interested to support big cat conservation.

• The IBCA was established by the government of India, through the nodal organisation National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

• It is a multi-country, multi-agency coalition comprising 95 big cat range countries, non-range countries with an interest in big cat conservation, conservation partners, scientific organisations engaged in big cat research, as well as business groups and corporates committed to supporting big cat conservation efforts. 

• The primary objective of IBCA is to facilitate collaboration and synergy among stakeholders, consolidating successful conservation practices and expertise to achieve a common goal of conservation of big cats at global level. 

• This unified approach, bolstered by financial support, aims to bolster the conservation agenda, halt the decline in big cat populations, and reverse current trends.

• The legal foundation for IBCA as a treaty-based, inter-governmental organisation was formalised on January 23, 2025.

• IBCA envisages synergy through a collaborative platform for increased dissemination of gold standard big cat conservation practices, provides access to a central common repository of technical know-how and corpus of funds, strengthens the existing species-specific intergovernmental platforms, networks and transnational initiatives on conservation and protection and assists securing our ecological future and mitigate adverse effects of climate change.