Banker’s effort to fund tiger survival

NEW YORK – Stuart Bray, a City of London financier turned environmentalist, is using his fortune and skills to develop novel ways to fund conservation, starting with teaching tigers to hunt in the South African bush.

‘The tigers have taken over my life,’ Bray said, describing the wonderment of the first chuffs, or friendly snorts, he had communicating with a tiger.’It intellectually convinced me to work to save the environment. But I made my life in the markets and I am convinced I can do this through the markets,’ he said over tea recently in Beijing.Eight years ago, Bray, an American working in the upper echelons of London finance, made an 11th-hour rescue of his Chinese-born wife’s eco-tourism efforts to save the South China tiger after an acrimonious split with her business partners.He quickly realised that picture-taking tourists were not going to pay for a biologically diverse habitat big enough to maintain a healthy, wild tiger population.He’s testing that theory with a preserve he’s cobbled together in South Africa to bring over South China tigers to live in the wild. In the process, he has upset the conservation establishment. Rather than donating to existing programmes he is going it alone. His unprecedented plan is to use financial markets to save a sub species of his choosing.Bray has poured nearly his entire personal fortune of US$25 million into the effort despite slim odds for a rebound in the population of the South China tiger, one of nine types of tiger worldwide. Three of those sub-species are now extinct.The soft-spoken former-Deutsche Bank structured finance expert believes sustainable development projects rather than the standard models of philanthropy will be the long-term solution to funding conservation projects.He hopes to tap into growing global demand for environmentally-friendly investment.’It became clear to me that a big part of the problem in conservation is finance… In conservation you tend to find people who are anti-business and it struck me as though they needed some business expertise,’ said a clean-cut Bray, dressed in his banker best before meeting with Chinese officials.Conservation Finance International (CFI), solely owned by a trust Bray set up, is working to create a debt-free endowment for the tigers by leasing forests in China, harvesting the timber and selling securities backed by sale of the wood.The firm estimates returns in the 10-12 per cent range. Future financings may be backed by wind, water or solar.The tigers will get a cut of the profits, once a team of 10, some with dual degrees in forestry and business, is paid.’We pay our costs but not the sort of compensation that bankers are accustomed to and not the profit levels for ourselves that banks would expect,’ said Bray, who looks young for his middle-age.’But we are willing to work hard and earn less money for something we think is important,’ said Bray, who met his wife Quan Li, a former executive at Gucci, while they were students at Wharton Business School. – Nampa-Reuters