Tsering Dorje, Tibet

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Every year, thousands of Tibetans make pilgrimages to Dharamsala, India, to hear the Dalai Lama's Kalachara teachings. Last year, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader struck an unusually secular note, warning against the exploitation of endangered species. Tibetans are among Asia's largest consumers of tiger pelts and leopard skins. They use the fur to trim their robes, in rituals and as rugs; tiger claws and dried leopard organs are also used in traditional medicine, and Tibetans dominate the illicit trade in animal parts between India and China. The Dalai Lama's word traveled fast. Buddhists in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, burned their pelts in massive bonfires after signing pledges that they would never wear skins again. The price of pelts plummeted in Tibet.

Much of the credit goes not to the Dalai Lama but to an environmentalist named Tsering Dorje. After the holy man spoke, Tsering Dorje and a small group of volunteers made sure those in attendance were given pamphlets detailing the destruction of Asia's wildlife, so that Tibetans who made the pilgrimage could take the message home. The effort was part of a program that Tsering Dorje, a consultant with the Wildlife Trust of India, launched in 2005 to educate Tibetan refugees about endangered wildlife. What's remarkable is that this 32-year-old native Tibetan is making a difference from a distance, protecting his homeland's wildlife while living in exile in Dharamsala.

Tsering Dorje grew up in a tiny Tibetan village not far from the Dalai Lama's birthplace. As a child making pilgrimages with his family to seek blessings from faraway monks, he discovered Tibet's forests, mountains, rivers and wetlands. "I fell in love with these natural beauties," he says. "I wanted to stay lost in the forests forever." But in Tibet, where activism is viewed with suspicion by the Chinese government, his dreams of becoming a conservationist would not easily be realized. His early work documenting the negative environmental impact of a World Bank-funded project to relocate farmers from their drought-stricken homes to rich wetlands in the Tibetan Autonomous Region earned him the Chinese government's ire when the bank pulled out in 1999. Tsering Dorje was detained, forced to sign a confession that he was working against his country and warned away from further activism. In the years that followed, he taught villagers how to raise seedlings and plant trees, and planned to launch an environment-themed Tibetan-language newspaper—only to have the authorities reject his approval requests. "If I didn't have support from the government, I knew I couldn't make a difference," he says. "So I had to leave." Tsering Dorje crossed Tibet's border with Nepal and eventually made his way to Dharamsala, the first stop for many Tibetan refugees.

In exile, Tsering Dorje has been able to do more than he ever dreamed in Tibet. In August, he embarked on a six-month lecture tour of every major Tibetan exile community in northern India, hoping to spread his message further.

Yet the success of his wildlife-preservation campaign is bittersweet, as he's doubtful he will ever see the results with his own eyes. "I'd like to go home again," he says. "I just don't know if I can."