Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

This requires no comment:

A zoo where 11 rare Siberian tigers recently starved to death is fast becoming a symbol of the mistreatment of animals in China, with allegations of misspent subsidies, bribes, and the deaths of at least dozens of animals.

The local authorities stepped in over the weekend, taking control of the 10-year-old zoo, in Shenyang in northeastern China, and dispatching experts to try to save the remaining 20 or so tigers, three of which are in critical condition.

Among the charges under investigation are employee reports that the zoo used the bones of dead tigers to illegally manufacture a liquor believed to have therapeutic qualities. One employee said he had made vats of the liquor and served it to visiting government officials.

The government action comes after years of troubles at the zoo, the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo in the capital of Liaoning Province. The zoo’s animal population has declined from a high of more than 1,000 to about half that now.

This would be a good time (again) to donate to Panthera.

Saving The Tiger: First Steps

Tigers are on the brink of extinction. This fact brought me initially surprise, and then immediately grief, despair, rage, anger and sadness. So, I've written about it-- this is the fourth essay in a week -- in an effort to alert others to this catastrophe. I consider the extinction of tigers and other big cats an environmental emergency, an impending disaster.

The first big cat extinction since the saber tooth tiger became extinct 10,000 years ago is an extremely important event and a cause for great concern. Tigers are the top of the jungle food chain. They're "megafauna", the kind of big, well known animal that is an indicator of the jungle's health. When there are many, and they are healthy, the jungle, an interconnected web of life of many interdependent species of animals and plants, is healthy. And when there are few, in fact, so few that extinction of the largest animal in the ecosystem is a distinct possibility, it means the jungle is dying.

If tigers are on the brink of extinction, so too is the jungle, so too is the planet. Here are data:

More tigers are kept in captivity in the U.S. than are left in the wild -- and there are few regulations to keep these tigers from ending up on the black market. The largest numbers of captive tigers are in Texas (an estimated 3,000+), but they are also kept in other states.

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

sources

What is causing the extinction? The threats to tiger survival are apparently quite clear. There don't seem to be any mysteries. The threats are mainly population growth, deforestation, hunting, poaching, and the illegal trade of tiger bones and other parts. Private, unregulated captivity of tigers in the US may contribute to illegal trade in their bones and other parts.

Permit me to cut to the chase. I am painfully aware that I have no idea what to do to halt the extinction of tigers. I personally have no plan. But others clearly do. As small, interim steps, I suggest your immediate support to the following:

Panthera. I discovered Panthera yesterday. I gave them a donation. Panthera uses 100% of donations for preservation projects. You can earmark your gift to a particular species.

Big Cat Rescue

World Wildlife Fund

This is the Internet. Small contributions by large numbers of people can make enormous changes possible. I am happy to have made a donation to Panthera. I hope you will join me.

I also suggest spreading the story of this extinction far and wide. Use the Internet to spread it. The situation merits serious attention. Yes, the tiger is not alone in facing extinction; there are many large cats across the world that also face extinction. These include the Iberian Lynx, the Florida Panther, and jaguars throughout Central America. But the tiger, because of the Chinese New Year and 2010 being the Year of the Tiger, is right now the most visible animal humans are driving into extinction. That is a story that needs to be told. It needs to be reflected upon. And it merits serious discussion about just what can be done to save the tiger and spare the planet. But before there can be a discussion, the news of this extinction needs to be spread. I am happy to do that. I hope you will join me.

Yesterday, as a comment to an essay, LaFeminista posted William Blake's famous poem:

Tiger Tiger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger Tiger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

She and I both sigh at this 1794 poem. And I ask, more than 2 centuries after Blake wrote it, "What mortal hands dare destroy thy fearful symmetry?" How dare we permit this devastation to occur.

Happy Year Of The (Almost Extinct) Tiger

Tiger In Captivity

The Tiger is almost extinct. This situation is beyond disquieting. It's a very scary, dire one for our small planet. As Meteor Blades wrote yesterday

"Sometimes fury and despair are the only responses that one can come up with. It seems as if nothing anybody does - laws, scoldings, appeals to people's better nature - will stop this needless, heedless destruction.

Tigers are the top of the jungle food chain. They're "megafauna", the kind of big, well known animal that is an indicator of the jungle's health. When there are many, and they are healthy, the jungle, an interconnected web of life of many interdependent species of animals and plants, is healthy. And when there are few, in fact, so few that extinction of the largest animal in the ecosystem is a distinct possibility, it means the jungle is dying, if not the planet. It means that the first, large feline extinction since the sabre toothed tiger is around the corner. And that is not a cause, but a symptom of the dying of Earth.

Today, February 14, is the New Year of the Year of the Tiger. Time reports:

The Year of the Tiger begins on Feb. 14, which should mean good things for the world. In Chinese astrology, tigers are known as bold and independent, good luck against fire and thieves.

But if the Year of the Tiger ends up being anything like every other year over the past few decades, it won't be very good for tigers themselves. The princely animals are among the most endangered species on the planet. In the wild, they number fewer than 3,000; their habitat, which once stretched in Asia from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, has shrunk by more than 90% over the past century, and it's shrinking still. "We once had more than 100,000 of these animals," says Sybille Klenzendorf, the director of the World Wildlife Fund's U.S. Species Conservation Program. "There's a real chance that we will lose this animal in our own lifetime."

There are many threats to the tiger's survival. They are easily categorized:

[Tigers] face a battle on many fronts: tigers are threatened by deforestation, hunting and the illegal trade of their bones and other parts, which are used in some forms of traditional Chinese medicine, mostly for consumers in Asia.

But one of the most unexpected threats to the tiger comes here in the U.S., where there are more tigers kept in private captivity then there are surviving wild animals left in the world. ...conservationists worry that captive tigers could too easily end up fueling the illegal global wildlife trade.

This is a very ugly picture. And the bottom line is extinction. And death.

I've been obsessed with the loss of the tigers. It has filled me with grief, despair, anger, and rage. Why? A brief review might help to explain my feelings, if you've not been following this:

More tigers are kept in captivity in the U.S. than are left in the wild -- and there are few regulations to keep these tigers from ending up on the black market. The largest numbers of captive tigers are in Texas (an estimated 3,000+), but they are also kept in other states.

source

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

source

It's disgraceful. I am worried that tigers might be becoming extinct. I have written some essays about that (this is the third). The idea that tigers are becoming extinct is making me ill: it brings on feelings of anger, sadness, despair, grief, longing, anger, rage, frustration. I find myself thinking about it. Constantly. I don't understand why humans allow this sort of depredation of the planet, and why in general they remain oblivious to it. So I write my essays. I would scream and yell, but I doubt anyone would hear me.

I am painfully aware that I have no idea what to do to prevent the extinction of tigers. I have no plan. As small, interim steps, I suggest support for the following:

Big Cat Rescue

World Wildlife Fund

Wildlife Conservation Society

I also suggest spreading the story of this extinction far and wide. The situation merits serious attention. Yes, the tiger is not alone in facing extinction; there are several large cats across the world that also face extinction. These include the Iberian Lynx, the Florida Panther, and jaguars throughout Central America. But the tiger, because of the Chinese Zodiac, is right now the most visible animal humans are driving into extinction. That is a story that needs to be told. It needs to be reflected upon. And it merits serious discussion about just what can be done to save the tiger and spare the planet.

Free The Tigers! Spare The Tigers!

Captive Tigers in China Waiting For Slaughter

A few days ago I was worried that tigers might be becoming extinct, so I wrote an essay about it. The idea that tigers were becoming extinct was making me ill: it brought on feelings of anger, sadness, despair, grief, longing. I found myself thinking about it. Constantly.

As if all of that weren't enough, I then found this in the New York Times:

The crowd-pleasing Year of the Tiger, which begins Sunday, could be a lousy year for the estimated 3,200 tigers that still roam the world’s diminishing forests.

With as few as 20 in the wild in China, the country’s tigers are a few gun blasts away from extinction, and in India poachers are making quick work of the tiger population, the world’s largest. The number there, around 1,400, is about half that of a decade ago and a fraction of the 100,000 that roamed the subcontinent in the early 20th century.

Shrinking habitat remains a daunting challenge, but conservationists say the biggest threat to Asia’s largest predator is the Chinese appetite for tiger parts. Despite a government ban on the trade since 1993, there is a robust market for tiger bones, traditionally prized for their healing and aphrodisiac qualities, and tiger skins, which have become cherished trophies among China’s nouveau riche.

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

And now as I think about the end of tigers, I feel wave after wave of anger, sadness, despair, grief, longing.

And all of those feelings are amplified by response to this news. Shrugging, yes. Mumbling, yes. But mostly, the response is silence. Crickets. And more and more crickets. You can look at the comments here and here. There are possibilities other than mass apathy: maybe my writing wasn't very good and it didn't elicit any response, maybe the situation is just completely overwhelming, and nobody knows what to do. Maybe it's that nobody read the essay, or the comments left in Open Threads pointing to it. There are I suppose a lot of other possibilities.

But to me it means that shortly, very shortly tigers will be living solely in captivity on this planet. And after that, they will slowly become extinct. Because they don't belong in cages, walking in circles, going slowly and inevitably insane.

All I can do is point to these reports and ask, "Are we as humans going to let this happen?" And when I do that, what will I hear as a response?

Blue Tigers

Today WWF issued a report on tigers. Among other distressing items, there is this:

More tigers are kept in captivity in the U.S. than are left in the wild -- and there are few regulations to keep these tigers from ending up on the black market. The largest numbers of captive tigers are in Texas (an estimated 3,000+), but they are also kept in other states

Soon, if you go looking for tigers, there may not be any to find in the wild. Just in the zoo. You'll be able to watch them walk in circles and growl and snarl. You'll have to imagine, if you can, what it would be like to encounter one while you were walking in the brush:



But I digress. Jorge Luis Borges was really interested in, in fact obsessed with tigers. In his story Blue Tigers the narrator, a professor of logic, searches for a Blue Tiger that was reportedly found in the Ganges Delta. He doesn't find the tiger. Instead, the local villagers send him on a series of wild goose chases by telling him that the tiger has been sighted in various places in the area. He never finds the tiger. No blue tigers. No yellow tigers. No white tigers. Instead he finds something fantastic: "stones of the spawn," blue stones whose behavior defies logic, science and mathematics. But he never finds any tigers, blue or any other color.

When I first read the story, I thought the unsuccessful search for the Blue Tiger was not a big problem. There were, I thought, other tigers to be found. If a Blue Tiger weren't found, that was fine. You could go into the jungle and find other tigers. Thousands of them. Maybe they wouldn't be blue, but at least you could find a tiger if you wanted to.

But now the missing Blue Tiger, the one not found in the story, has become a bigger problem. A far bigger, more worrisome one. Soon, humans will have made common tigers as rare as blue ones in Borges stories. And we will be devastatingly poorer for our reckless and stupid conduct that killed them off. When we act like that, we humans don't deserve anything as wonderful, as fierce, as wild, as beautiful as a tiger.