What We Lose, If We Lose The Tigers
By Jim Taylor
30 November, 2010
Countercurrents.org
During this last week, leaders of 13 countries around the world met for a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. But this summit was not about banking, or wars, or manufacturing. It didn’t deal with dollars or deficits.
It was about tigers.
Tigers, you say? What’s Russia got to do with tigers?
It turns out that Russia is the only nation in the world where the tiger population is increasing. In the winter of 1939-1940, a Russian biologist named Lev Kaplanov conducted the world’s first tiger census, along Russia’s Pacific coast. At that time, he concluded only 30 Amur tigers were still alive.
Kaplanov made a radical recommendation – a total ban on tiger hunting.
It took seven years, but in 1947 Russia became the first country to declare tigers an endangered species.
And it worked. By the late 1960s, there were about 100 Amur tigers. Today, nearly 500.
That shows what can happen, but mostly hasn’t. A century ago, the world had an estimated 100,000 tigers, roaming the width of Asia. Today, barely 3200 remain.
Half of the world’s tigers live in India. Or they used to. Ten years ago, India claimed 3642 tigers. India’s most recent estimates – admittedly preliminary – show just 1411.
If this trend continues, says James Leape, director general of the World Wildlife Fund, tigers may disappear by 2022 (the next Year of the Tiger in the Chinese calendar).
Tigers are the world’s largest species of cat – bigger, stronger, more deadly than even the fabled African lion. Of their nine sub-species, three are already extinct.
The 13 countries in the “Tiger summit” -- besides India and Russia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam – hope to reverse that decline.
Russia hosted the summit partly because of its success with the Amur tiger. And partly because of publicity that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gained two years ago. At a wildlife research reserve, a tiger slipped free of her harness and charged a terrified television crew. Quick-draw Putin dropped the tiger with a tranquilizer dart.
Sceptics suggested the event had been staged. Regardless, it linked Putin with tigers in public perceptions.
A century ago, the biggest threat to tigers was big game hunters. I have visited Indian palaces where a dozen or more stuffed tigers still guard empty foyers and banquet halls.
Jim Corbett established a worldwide reputation as a hunter with his book, Man-eaters of the Kumaon. In later life, he became an ardent conservationist.
Today, the bigger threats are peasants and poachers.
As Asian populations soar, peasant farmers keep clearing forests for farmland, destroying habitat. When the big cats kill goats or cattle, farmers put out poison.
And poachers scavenge tigers for the Asian black market in medicines, charms, and aphrodisiacs.
Divided up into its parts, each tiger is worth around $50,000 – a huge sum in poverty-stricken regions. With every kill, too, the laws of supply and demand kick in; fewer tigers, higher prices.
The summit aims to show that a living tiger is worth more than the sum of its parts.
Why should you – or I – care what happens to tigers? There are no tigers in North America.
I’ve only seen a live tiger in the wild once. On a trip to India, Joan and I went to the country’s largest tiger sanctuary, Ranthambore. The ranger’s jeep crested a rise, and jammed to a stop. Less than a car’s length before us, a tiger sprawled right across the width of the road. In the sun, the colours of her coat glowed like campfire embers.
She was the most magnificent creature I had ever seen.
We could barely breathe.
She stretched, yawned, exposing her incredible fangs. Then she rose and leisurely padded down the road ahead of us, huge paws drawing tiny puffs of dust from the dry earth.
She stopped at a small stream, pink tongue lapping up cool water. Then she turned aside into the undergrowth. That vivid pattern of black and orange stripes, so striking in sunlight, caused her to blend instantly into the dappled shadows.
Just before she disappeared, she turned, and stared at us.
And I remembered poet William Blake’s lines:
Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night....
There have been a few moments when, if my life had come to an end at that instant, I would have had no regrets, no complaints. Like old Simeon in the Bible, I would have said, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace...”
This was one of those moments.
If we fail to protect the few remaining tigers, the loss of yet another species will not have much practical impact on our lives.
But it may be a symptom of a far greater loss – the inability of modern humans to feel a sense of awe.
Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. His column appears Sundays. He can be reached at [email protected].
