Tiger 'rescued' from river in India after 75 mile swim and taken to a zoo!

NEWS AND COMMENT: This tiger story from India irritates me a hell of a lot. The authorities rescued a tiger that had survived an arduous 75 mile swim down a swollen river. This is a large adult male who was swept into the Brahmaputra River in the North-east Indian state of Assam (as reported).

The tiger was spotted by passers-by who were out walking on Tuesday. He was submerged up to his neck and apparently fighting to stay afloat long enough to reach an island in the river.

Tiger rescued from river and sent to a bloody zoo. Image provided by the Telegraph newspaper.

Aswani Kumar from the Assam State Zoo reported that the tiger was tranquilized after capture and sent to a veterinary hospital where they discovered lacerations to his body and where he was kept under observation.

It is the following information which irritates me a lot. They're going to keep the tiger there and when the veterinarians give clearance that he is well enough to be moved they will take him to the Guwahati Zoo.

Why on earth take the tiger to a zoo to live the rest of his life in captivity when he had a good life in the wild in a reserve? Apparently it is likely that the tiger came from the Orang National Park and Tiger Reserve which is 75 miles from where he was rescued.

This is an incredibly bad decision. It seems to me as if the authorities rescued the tiger with the purpose of stealing him from his wild environment to put him in the zoo where they needed a tiger to attract customers. This is an abuse of tigers if I am correct.

It totally undoes all the good they did to 'rescue' (steal from the wild?)  the tiger if indeed he needed rescuing in the first place because tigers are incredibly good swimmers. They can win for 4 miles in the ocean if needs be.

Think of that poor tiger now having to wake up in a bloody cage on a concrete floor and live there for the rest of his life when he was prowling around the wild in his natural habitat in a protected reserve.

This is not conservation or protection; this is an abuse. If I'm correct, shame on them.