Tigers, Lions, and other exotic animals are constantly shipped to wealthy nations. This is creating and increasing the demand for these animals, drastically reducing their population in their natural habitat. You see this everywhere, right under your nose, usually under the facade of "due dilligence". In the West exotic animals are usually placed in some backyard under the previlage of some form of bullshit animal right and rescue mission. Recently, in New York city, some black guy was charged with having a Tiger in his apartment, and he's case is just an example of how bad poaching has deteriorated to. The black guy was just too poor to be able to defend his case; everywhere accross America exotic animals are somewhere in cages, used for amusement and as pets to make some people happy. These are some of the problems the ecosystem is going throw, and these are some of the ways developed countries take advantage of undeveloped ones. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/11/30/our.planet.mountain.gorillas/ http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what...angered_species/tigers/bengal_tiger/index.cfm
By far, the greater majority of the people on Earth will never, ever see any wild animal in its natural habitat. So I have to ask ...who gives a shit? If we have a few tigers or polar bears in zoos, people can see them and everything is fine. Almost no one will go to Africa or India to see tigers, nor to the polar regions to see polar bears. So ....what the hell difference does it make? Baron Max
What the hell am I supposed to do about it? Most of these poachings are for "medicine" for some stupid asian businessman who can't get it up.
You should go to Africa, find a tiger and follow it around protecting it from poachers and anything else that might hurt it! If I do the same, then between us, we can save two tigers, maybe more! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Baron Max
hey Baron i hope you are well. A very honourable suggestion. Slight problem I doubt you'll find a tiger in Africa!!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~ take care zak
Life is not always about humans alone you know? Taking away Tigers leaves an unbalanced food chain. How would you feel if someone takes you out of your free range and into a cage?
There is a far greater demand, and the main reason for the demise of tigers, lions and other exotic wild animals in Africa and Eurasia, due to the poaching of these species to be ground up and used as aphrodisiacs and psuedo-medicines/pseudo-pharmaceuticals than the extremeley few that wind up as exotic pets in a Westerner's home. In the later's case, when the animal becomes too much for the owner to handle, it never gets euthanisized anyways. It will wind up in a zoo or attempts will be made to put it back in its natural habitat if feasible.
How can people be fuckin stupid...oh well. I guarantee you the tigers will eventually fade to black in the near future. The Asiatic lion can only already be found in one place in Asia and is very well ready to face extinction. I'm probably going to write to WWF with some statistics.
Are you going to feed those tigers, Chatha? Or do you expect others to do that without your money? ...you just want to "save the tigers", but you don't want to do anything to feed them throughout their lives. I did a similar stupid thing with the wild horses of the American west. We fought like hell to save them from culling and slaughter .....only to find later tht the horses outbred their grazing lands and many thousands starved to death. Ahh, but they were free, huh????? Starving to death is not a pretty way to go. Saving the tigers is the same. Without an adequate infrastructure in place to feed and care for them, they're doomed. Baron Max
Barox, not everybody thinks like you. I don't know what your problem is with the horses but there are still very plenty horses in the world comapred to Tigers. So if horses are over grazing...don't deter..there is a reason. Anyway the problem with Tigers is that they are being captured for displays and pets. I know there are other problems like human encroachment but that can be decided later. One step at a time... we can't run before we walk. Indian conservationists are trying their best but the condition is alarming and any little contribution will do. We are going to neglect this issue and treat it lackadaisically until tigers eventually disappear right under our nose. The immidiate need now is to create awareness. A lot of poaching is a result of human socio-economic influence on Earth. Peasants will immidiately kill off an exotic animal for money, a good example is the fur industry. Animals belong in the open free range, lets keep it that way. I don't have a problem with zoos but caging animals has a effect too, studies show that caged animals find it more difficult to develop sexual libido and breed. A number of tiger species have already disappered, includingthe Caspian, Bali, and Javan, all disappeared in the last 200 years. Rich people, please stop fucking with them and leave them alone.
The zoos are saving them. People will keep destroying nature, and sooner or later, the only animals that will survive will be the ones in the zoos. Embrace the zoos.
It is a good sentiment but you examples reall dont endanger any species that i know of. Not many people in the Bonx have tigers or for that matter any exotic animals. An example would be some creep cutting the balls of an animal to sell as an aphrodisiac or some BS like that.
The answer is to breed them and sell them right here at home. No matter what we do short of killing off the native humans of the areas that they live in, tigers, lions, leopards, cheetahs, and other "exotics" will die out from habitat destruction and poaching. Taking them from their natural habitats and breeding them in captivity guarantees that the species will survive. Any such animal has a much greater chance of survival in captivity than in the "wild" where no one has a chance in hell of stopping poaching or destruction of habitat. The actions of the animal rights nuts who don't want people to own their own exotics are exactly like habitat destruction but they are in effect destroying a lot more habitat, by making it legally unavailable, than is the encroachment of humans on what is left of the wild. Chatha, I'm sorry, but appeals like yours, if granted, have the effect of sharply reducing the chances of these animals. These weepy, whiny assaults on our common sense have destroyed more tigers than poachers have these last few years. They have pretty much destroyed the ocelot, and the white rhino or any other rhino, forget it. They're toast, destroyed by their own protectors who protect them from having a future.
Metakron: Alas, your fatalistic view is probably correct. The zoos have embraced it, and try to re-create the habitats. You raise a moral/ethical question in your second sentence. I won't comment myself, but is it moral/unethical to kill off stupid people who are poaching and endangering species? And if so, who gets to decide whether that species is worth saving? In a world of religious and other wars currently ongoing, is it possible to justify killing such poachers along the same lines as killing of combatant enemies? Now, get over to IceAgeCivilizations posts about when the Ice Ages ended (history section) as he believes it was only 2,000 years B.C. (4,000 years B.P.)
Walter, even setting aside the moral/ethical questions, what is physically easier to implement? People can breed lions in their back yards, at a risk roughly equivalent to that of keeping horses. There are all sorts of books, supplies, and lion cubs available to do this with. It's just farming.
I don't have a problem with that - in fact I think it's great. But we should also at least attempt to preserve some wild regions - maybe at a future time we could release captive animals back into the wild (as we've done with the Condor, wolves, etc. in various places - and even fish stocking). I've also envisioned such wild animal parks in which the people could wander in caged corridors, protected from the animals in their wild habitat. That would be a real money-maker, I would imagine, if tourists could go to Africa and wander amongst Lions as they preyed on Zebras, protected by the cage in which they were encased (kinda like a shark-cage, only bigger).
Okay, I give up. What the hell good are tigers in the wild? I mean, the chances are that none of us will ever see a tiger other than in a zoo or on tv. Those footages can be saved for all eternity, so why would anyone need to go to India to see a tiger? And if they don't, what the hell good are tigers in the wild? And please, please, give me some rational, logical comments. Just saying that it's good to have wild tigers is sorta' flimsy, ain't it? Baron Max