A scientist who claims the world record for spotting the most types of primates wants more challengers — via a new brand of eco-tourism that might stave off extinction for many apes, monkeys and lemurs.

Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) primate specialist group, reckons he has seen 350 out of 634 known species and sub-species of primate in the wild.

“There are another couple of people in the running but I think that’s the highest,” Mittermeier, born in 1949, told me of his list compiled over about four decades of work often in the world’s tropical forests.

He said that he was planning to launch a website with the lists of the top experts’ sightings.

“Then people can try to catch us,” he said.

Eco-tourism to remote jungles could be a way of easing deforestation and human hunting for primate meat, a delicacy in some countries. Almost half the world’s primate species are under threat of extinction because of human activity, according to a report by the IUCN on Tuesday.

Personal tallies of species work with birdwatchers, some of whom zealously record how many of the 10,000 or so species worldwide they have seen. The late American Phoebe Snetsinger is the record holder with more than 8,000; a tally of several thousand is enough to inspire awe (…at least among fellow enthusiasts).

A drawback for primate spotting is that birds are obviously easier to see — a glance out of my office here over a square in central Oslo reveals several pigeons, a gull swooping past and a couple of sparrows. There’s not a single chimpanzee, gibbon, orang-utan or gorilla (…though I wonder about that big guy in the heavy coat over in the corner).

So my species scorecard so far today — Birds: 3, Primates: 1 (he’s human).

Trips to remote tropical region to spot primates could be one way of putting a price tag on primates and their habitats: local people would have a stake in conservation if their income from tourism were higher than from hunting or logging.

Of course there would be a host of environmental problems in bringing more visitors to the jungles. But maybe they could do more good than harm?

So would you pay for a trip to a tropical forest in the Congo basin, or along the Amazon? Perhaps to the Ivory Coast to try to track down a Miss Waldron’s red colobus? — a type of monkey not seen by a primatologist since 1978.

What do you think? Please tell us your views.

Indiana Jones and the World Bank sound like an odd couple to get anything done (”Quick, shoot that robber!” “Wait, we have to do a two-year feasibility study first!”) but are part of a new alliance trying to save the world’s tigers. (Read my colleague Leslie Wroughton’s fine story here)

Will it work? Tigers are under threat from loss of prey and habitats and a black market in tiger skins and bones.

And tiger numbers have plunged to about 4,000 today from more than 100,000 a century ago, according to the new International Tiger Coalition, led by the World Bank with backing from celebrities such as “Indiana Jones” star Harrison Ford, Bo Derek and Robert Duvall. Ford is a board member of Conservation International. 

A World Bank report warned that “if current trends persist, tigers are likely to be the first species of large predator to vanish in historic times.”

So far the ideas for saving tigers have obviously failed and tigers raised in farms (there are more tigers in captivity around the world, in countries including the United States and China, than in the wild) often get too flabby and lazy to be introduced into the wild.

And conservationists say fast economic growth in China may raise demand for traditional tiger parts, used as cures for everything from colds to rheumatism.

 Trying to make people aware of the threats to wildlife, the Humane Society, for instance, urges you to take a pledge not to buy items made from wild animal parts or to buy them as pets.

Do you have any good ideas to halt the slide? Please tell us.