How to kill off a species in five easy steps..

Tigers, the next vanishing species..

It was with a heavy heart I read the Independent article this past weekend about the probability of Tigers vanishing from the earth. These magnificent creatures are at the top of the food chain, and yet nothing concrete has been done to save them from the abyss of extinction. A quote to ponder from the write-up:

“The new figures and facts came as no surprise to conservationists, although the government is still recovering from the shock,” said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, which has several tiger programmes. “In Madhya Pradesh - which is known as the Tiger State - the study has shown a loss of 61 per cent on the figures of the previous tiger census. The state of Maharashtra has shown a loss of 57 per cent. “In the past census… many tigers were found outside the tiger reserves. The new study shows virtually no tigers outside the tiger reserves.”(emphasis mine)

Seems agriculture and energy needs along with land for humans to live on is more important. Also, the tiger has suffered from a loss of its natural habitat because of large-scale mining and hydropower dam projects. I comprehend this, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or agree with it. India has come into this millennium with a bang, a population topping 1.1 billion currently. The recently passed legislation in India that mandates the right of forest dwellers to remain in the forests is called the Forest Dwellers Rights Act and will most likely do more harm to the attempts by conservationists trying to keep the tiger population from becoming extinct. But human encroachment on the tiger’s living space isn’t the only reason that the tiger will probably vanish from face of the earth in my lifetime, save for zoo exhibits and captive breeding facilities.

Poaching is also responsible for the tigers demise. I quote again from the Independent article: Experts say the reasons for the decline of the tiger are simple. Not enough is being done to halt the continued poaching of the animals, which are highly prized in China and other parts of east Asia for their pelts and body parts. A tiger skin can fetch up to £5,300 while tiger penises - traditionally believed to have near-magical properties - can fetch £14,000 per kilo. At least four of India’s 27 tiger reserves no longer have tigers, and some experts believe that at least nine other reserves in India also are in danger of losing their remaining tigers to poachers or to villagers who set out poisoned carcasses to kill animals that venture beyond the boundaries of the reserves to attack their livestock.

People still believe the Rhino horn and the elephant tusk hold ‘magical properties’ too my dear reader. This type of belief disgusts me, but I do not blame any one group of people for such blatantly ridiculous falsehoods and human vanity that has been held in high regard for over a century in many cases.

Around 80% of the worlds tigers reside in India. The dwindling number of Tigers in India is now at a figure I find very hard to digest; the estimate that was released this week is a mind-numbing 1500, and that’s a high estimate my dear reader. At the beginning of the 20^th century, there was an estimated 100,000 of these creatures in the wild. The beginning of this decade saw the population around only 5000. Yet sadly no one heeded that dangerously low number. The worldwide population is now put around 3500 for all the different species of tigers. Indonesia has recently decreed that what is left of their species, the Sumatran tiger, must be moved to a conservation area so that a planned timber and palm-oil plantation can go ahead as planned. Surely that won’t help the numbers of tigers still alive in that region either. Moving an entire species into a controlled environment is a last ditch effort that puts economics in front of saving an entire species. The smallest of all tiger subspecies and found only in Sumatra, it is believed there are only 250 mature individuals left.

Back to India’s Tiger emergency. The government of India released a statement Thursday on how they plan to deal with the issue. It doesn’t give me much hope to be honest, because people and politics will always win out.

As Valmik Thapar, a tiger expert and member of the National Board of Wildlife has recently stated, regarding the worldwide population numbers of tiger species: “That size of a population is scientifically not viable.”

But as humans, at the top of the ecological food chain, must continue attempting to salvage what we can of this mighty carnivore. We have no alternative but to shovel the proverbial shit against the tide of extinction.

Tags: Poaching, Extinction, Tigers

Crossposted at The Peace Train