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Indian Tiger Park Now Tiger-Free
Panna National Park is now officially tiger free making it the second Indian tiger sanctuary to no longer have a tiger population. A census was conducted in the park, after authorities reported no Bengal Tiger sightings for a long time. Three years ago the park had a population of 24 tigers; however, none were found this year. Forest minister Rajendra Shukla is optimistic about the news and says, "Panna is our only park which has lost on this count. Three of state's reserve forests — Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Pench — have been adjudged among the best managed tiger reserves in the country."
Your number one priority in a Tiger Park is... to maintain the tiger population. How the fuck do you let 24 tigers die in 36 months? Am I the only one that thinks that maybe after the first 12 months someone should have said, "wait a minute, we've got less tigers now than 12 months ago" and tried to figure out what the fuck was going wrong? How the fuck do you not notice anything is wrong in three years? Surely 24 tigers did not die in the past few months, right?
Maybe I'm assuming too much; I was sick the day they taught tiger maintenance at tiger school.
They weren't tracking these things electronically? The technology to track animals has existed for years and surely they would have access to electronic tags and GPS tracking devices.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Humans are destroying everything natural in this world. I just hope we destory things faster so that the Earth can wipe us out and then start over with some newer species that will hopefully not rip the planet apart the way we do. The way we handle everything natural (trees, animals, air, water, soil), we deserve to be added to the list of species that have gone extinct.
What's really amusing is watching people try to rationalize why they deserve to exist. Right, because the species that chooses to force animals to mate in cages in order to be mass-slaughtered for food and clothing, the species that tears down forests to clear space for agrigulture and cities, the species whose members will literally do anything to "get ahead" of their neighbour in terms of money and power, the species who does nothing more than crave constant entertainment and shoveling their faces with as much food as they can get their fat hands on... yes, surely this is the species that deserves to dominate the planet.
Of course, the most disgusting and saddening thing is that almost all people don't see anything wrong with us as a species. That somehow since we're just flesh and blood, everything we do is "natural". Yeah ok. Go back to drinking your Coke or Pepsi. It has absolutely no benefit to your body. But do it anyway, because it tastes good. That's all that matters.
Magnificent animals.
Meanwhile the human population of India goes exponential.
The manager lets the poacher hunt the tigers for their own reasons, and gets a chunk of the profit. Everyone is happy except the conservationists and the tigers.
William Blake
Given that I'm a strong environmentalist my bias is unabashedly strong, but as a confirmed atheist even I can say that if we loose this species by way of our ignorance and greed we may have grounds for establishing original sin in our kind.
ideopath @ play
Um, evolution, unlike an God or such, isn't right or wrong so there's nothing wrong with saving species that are dying.
Or are you trying do be funny?
The free market in action! The invisible hand!
The reason the poachers are bold is because nobody has done the math. 6 billion monkeys on the planet = common. ~3k tigers left on the planet = rare. Perhaps they should start demonstrating that they value tigers more than monkeys.
Start guarding the park. anyone found inside for any reason without evidence of poaching will be killed on sight. People found poaching will be horribly public tortured for a month and then executed. Put severed heads on stakes around the borders of the park. Anyone found with tiger parts in the country will be immediately executed. Quite simply, they need to make entering the park seem like a automatic death sentence. Until they show a will to go farther than the poachers, they will lose and tigers will die.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They should have evolved a bulletproof skin, a gun on their forehead and a lawyer on their back.
One to protect them from direct attack by humans, one to protect their home with force and the third to do the same - only in court.
And even that probably wouldn't do them much good considering that "civilized" humans had up until recently found "local" humans to be less than those tigers and little more than apes.
When I say "civilized" and "local" I mean white and brown.
Heck! White humans have nearly killed off an entire continent's population of red humans - who had guns and horses and whatnot...
And oversized cats should "evolve".
Yeah, sure...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Obvious isn't it? "The Market will decide". This famous beastie called the market will decide what survives and what doesn't... and in India where there's a fair few people living on a dollar a day (say a hundred million or so people) then the idea of making a couple of thousand dollars for a days work hunting down and killing (poaching) a tiger seems quite attractive. What would you do for 6 years your current salary as a day's work?
India - developing country - limited resources - can't fund its nature reserves or equip its park rangers like a western country might, versus a lot of folk who see an opportunity to make several years wages in a day.
The west has to take a lot of the blame for reducing the numbers down to where they are right now, hunting tigers in India was big sport at the turn of the last century.
Hyde Park in central London is as much a tiger park as the one in India. No doubt my back garden could be a hippopotamus reserve too.
This makes India the laughing stock of the world. It is difficult to see how they could be more inept.
Still, they don't care. More space to build the high rises and shopping malls now.
The salary and benefits of a typical forest ranger in India is about 250$ a month, while his nephew in the city with barely passable English makes some 700$ a month in IT, phone bank, help desk jobs and more if technically qualified. Any wonder the warden turns a blind eye to poaching and accepts bribes?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The only remedy has got to be education at every level to convince people that a) tiger penises don't make you more virile and b) if people keep demanding tiger penises, there won't be any left for those who need them most (i.e., the lady tigers).
Perhaps films with plotlines involving men becoming permanently infertile and impotent due to rhino horn and tiger genitals.
Maybe someone can invent 'synthetic tiger-willy', rumoured to be 100 times more potent than real tiger-willy.
Subtle media association of 'tiger' with 'incredibly, flamboyantly, irredeemably gay'. And 'rhino horn' with 'likes to suck off men'.
Maybe even some boring, old-fashioned, public information films about the plight of the tiger, unscrupulous poachers and the scam charlatans selling the 'remedies'â"aimed at the end market, not the country of origin.
There is no reason why the Government can't do both (maintain communal harmony and continue conservation efforts). You argument is along the lines of saying that India should not have a space program when it still can't feed its citizens. Yes, resources are required for each of these efforts - but the problem here is not lack of resources, it's the proper utilisation of the same.
You go first. Seriously. Go kill yourself and reduce the burden on the planet. Put your money where your mouth is. If you have kids, kill them too. And everyone you love. No? You don't want to? Then go fuck yourself. I'm sick of people like you who project their own feelings of shame and inadequacy on the entire population.
Have a great day,
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Tigers aren't going extinct, they're becoming a captive species.
The largest population of tigers in the world is in the USA. Hell, there are more tigers in Texas than there are in the wild.
It's weird, sick and sad in equal measure. Poor bastards. This international symbol of power and grace is being wiped out in the wild by fear, ignorance and superstition and becomes little more than a colourful pet for rich, fat americans.