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 Asian Tiger Update: December 8th 1998 - Click here! January Update - Click here! Go to the Siberian Tiger WebRing The Year of the Tiger (new) |
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Time is running out for the world's largest cat. Reeling from the double punch of poachers and habitat loss, only a few hundred survive in the wild. While zoos work to maintain the animal's genetic diversity, Russian and American scientists are pooling their efforts in the fight to save this magnificent creature from extinction. India in the early 80's, the tiger's future, at least, seemed assured. Shooting them had been banned since 1970, and there were stiff penalties for anyone caught trying. Project Tiger, undertaken at the instigation of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1973, had set aside 9 national parks for special protection, 14 more have been added since. It seemed to be working, in 1984 forestry officials declared that the number of wild tigers in India had more than doubled, from 1,827 individuals to better than 4,000. Project Tiger seemed so successful, its reserves were said to be so full of tigers, that some conservationists worried about what would happen to all the surplus animals. (pause) Then came the bad news. The assasination of Mrs Gandhi in 1984 swept from the scene Indian wildlife's most powerful defender. Then in 1986 the Tigers began to dissappear. It was eventually discovered that they were being poisoned and shot and snared so that their bones could be smuggled out of India to supply the manufacturers of Chinese traditional medicines. Selling Tiger Parts is illegal in the U.S., Yet a recent survey conducted by the National Geographic magazine found that dozens of products advertised as containing tiger bone for sale in five U.S. cities. Pressure from foreign governments, including the U.S., helped persuade China and Taiwan to enforce their bans on the trade in tiger bones, and, perhaps in part as a result, the incidence of tiger poaching in both India and Russia appears to have fallen off since 1995. |
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