The Tiger

This is a compact infographic explaining why tigers are endangered. It is a broad-brush infographic covering the main issues. India recently announced the success of Project Tiger and said that there are now 3,167 tigers in India which is more than double the 1,411 recorded when the census began in 2006. This is based on a World Wildlife Fund for Nature camera trap count . I remain pessimistic about the future prospects of the Bengal tiger in India because the human population continues to grow. Tigers need a huge amount of space. Individual males need home ranges the size of a city. The reserves are too small to sustain decent-sized tiger populations. And poachers continue to kill tigers for body parts to supply the Chinese 'superstition market' believing that eating tiger flesh and drinking tiger bone wine does them some sort of magical good. It is all BS.

We have some information about how tigers died in Maharashtra, India from January to July 2021. The Chief Minister of that Indian state, Uddhav Thackeray, was answering a question about tiger deaths in the first six months of this year. He stated that 86 tigers had died across the country in the first six months of the year and 23 tigers had died in Maharashtra for a variety of reasons according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NCTA). Bengal tiger. Image in public domain. The causes of the deaths, I think, are quite revealing. Natural causes accounted for 15 tiger deaths. One tiger was killed in a railway accident. Four tigers were poisoned and one died of electrocution. That makes 21 deaths and therefore the remaining three were due to poaching to the best of my knowledge. 15 of the 23 tigers were adults and eight were cubs. He said that the government of the state had taken the required steps to prevent electrocution, poisoning and poaching in accordance with the NCTA...

Even today in Asia tiger body parts are still extensively used by people to improve their well-being or status, or so they believe. The Chinese are particularly involved with this. The body parts are also often used in Chinese traditional medicine. However, you can go back a very long way indeed throughout history to see how humankind's reverence and admiration of the tiger has often been its demise. It is very odd that animals that people admire end up being killed by people because humankind likes to possess or eat a piece of that animal thinking that it benefits them. Tiger clavicle bone as a brooch. Photo: Tennants Auctioneers. For example, the tiger clavicle bone was often turned into a brooch. You can see one in the photograph above. This particular brooch is mounted in gold metal with a pin fastener. It is 7.5 cm long. A very small bone for such a very large predatory animal. This is because its reduced size allows the tiger to stride longer and therefore move faster....

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...