In 2009 Julian spent three months driving and walking through many the unprotected forests of central, northern and north eastern India, on a quest to find a landscape in which to set up India’s first ever community based tiger conservancy. Once found, he spent a year seeking permission to undertake the huge project on 300 square kilometres of denuded forest. This project failed to get official approval from the Federal Government. Julian founded TOFTigers in 2004 in response to plummeting tiger numbers across Asia. He remains the main driver of the organisation. Julian believes that wildlife tourism is a critical force in saving wildlife, gaining community support and ensuring wilderness conservation and is passionate about advocating and helping to develop a more responsible and sustainable approach to ensuring it’s used for wildlife and habitat preservation across the Indian subcontinent and other tiger bearing landscapes. Julian was originally the Founder Director of an award winning nature and safari travel business, now called Steppes Discovery, part of the Steppes Travel Group. This ‘excuse for a job’ took him across the globe, visiting wildernesses areas on seven continents from India to the Arctic, from the Galapagos to Rwanda, designing and developing new wildlife tours and safaris programmes, in cooperation and support of a host of wildlife projects alongside conservation agencies and their wildlife experts and host communities. The company raised over £1.5M for wildlife conservation. In 2004 his concern at the Tiger’s continuing demise, prompted him to launch the TOFTigers campaign to get the expanding nature tourism sector to support better and more sustainable nature tourism practices in Tiger parks across the Indian subcontinent. Today it has over 220 travel businesses involved – from around the globe. In 2009 Julian spent three months driving and walking through many the unprotected forests of central, northern and north eastern India, on a quest to find a landscape in which to set up India’s first ever community based tiger conservancy. Once found, he spent a year seeking permission to undertake the huge project on 300 square kilometres of denuded forest. This project failed to get official approval from the Federal Government. In 2012 he launched a web-based tiger watch project, called www.tigernation.org. Alongside many Indian colleagues and tiger experts he put together the ‘Facebook for Tigers’ – allow users to follow the daily dramas of tigers in the wild – as a direct way of keeping them safe in their forest home and as a global educational medium on the daily lives of specific tigers. Julian has been interviewed for radio and TV around the world, writes numerous articles, as well as lectures on nature and wildlife conservation both in the UK, in India and around the globe.

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