The Tiger

COMMENT ON NEWS: Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China appear to be the big four countries where tigers are abused the most but in Europe we can add France. I was surprised. The news goes against the grain or our perceptions of France as a civilised country. And they like to believe that they are more civilised than any other country.  France allegedly involved in abusive tiger trade. Photo: Pixabay. An organisation called 'Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project' have concluded that 'France is home to a booming tiger trade'. They refer to an article by Oxpeckers - 'Investigative Environmental Journalism'. Oxpeckers say that tigers are big business in France. It looks like France is leading the way in Europe on big animal abuse. The po-faced holier-than-thou French who love bureaucracy because it makes them more civilised (they think) are showing their true colours in allowing this abuse of the world's most iconic animal. The more iconic an animal is...

Another bizarre tiger story. A French couple living in France wanted to purchase a high filial Savannah cat which you might know is a serval-domestic cat hybrid. They bought the cat online but were delivered a Sumatran tiger cub instead. Extraordinarily, they did not know that they had taken possession of a tiger until a few days later when they contacted the police. They purchased the animal for €6000. Savanah cats and tiger cubs have a completely different appearance by the way. Tiger cub. Stock image from EPA. The Sumatran tiger is highly endangered. The trade in wild kittens of any species is arguably out of control. There are international treaties (CITES) in place to protect wildlife from this kind of trade but they are unenforced or the enforcement lacks teeth. If it isn't tiger cubs it'll be tiger body parts which are traded to feed the traditional Chinese medicine market in China. Lion bones are also popular which causes no end of lion abuse in Africa. This rather o...

We know that Bengal tigers are killed by poachers for the Chinese traditional medicine market. What route do the carcasses take to get to China from India or the other countries adjacent to India where the Bengal tiger remains (just)? Well, some carcasses have been seized in Bangkok, Thailand and the smugglers interviewed. They say that the Bengal tiger was being smuggled from Malaysia to Thailand, a hub for trade in wildlife. As Malaysia is south of Thailand it must be the case that the carcasses were shipped from India across the Indian Ocean to Malaysia and then by road to Thailand and then by road to Laos or Burma before entering southern China. That's it. Thailand is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). And so is China. Ha, ha. It's a joke, isn't it? CITES is a complete failure, pretty well. CITES in relation to cats . Thai people are mainly Buddhists. They are meant to treat animals nicely. So-called “tiger bone gl...