The Tiger

Firstly, tigers are not necessarily becoming extinct and by 'extinct' we mean in the wild because there will probably always be captive 'generic' tigers. A recent camera trap survey of Bengal tiger numbers in India indicated increased numbers . The Bengal tiger in India and Bangladesh is high endangered and may become extinct in the wild due to (a) poaching in the reserves in India to supply the tiger body part business in China. Wealthy Chinese like to eat tiger body parts. Ask them why! Also (b) the Bengal tiger reserves are arguably too small. The population sizes in the reserves are consequently too small and they are island populations which can result in inbreeding and infertility. Essentially, the tiger does not have enough space due to constantly increasing human population size in India and Bangladesh. It could be said that the reserves were poorly created. The tiger reserves are not that well managed if we are honest. Some are and some are not. Four tiger ...

Anecdotal evidence suggests or claims that there are around 5,000 tigers in captivity in Texas, USA. If that were true there would be far more tigers in Texas than there are in the wild in the rest of the world. It is something that is constantly recited on the internet. Is it true? Well we don't know for sure it seems because there is no requirement for individual people who keep a tiger or tigers in captivity as a sort of pet to register the tiger and facility with the authorities if the tiger is a "generic" tiger. Generic means a tiger of no specific subspecies. In other words a hybrid tiger. Lots of tigers even those managed by specialist people and so called experts are hybrid or generic tigers. However, we do know the number of tigers that are in USDA licensed facilities (USDA is the United States Department of Agriculture) in Texas. Lynn Culver the executive director of the Feline Conservation Federation requested numbers from the USDA-APHIS office under the ...