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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."
In this particular case, "profit" is exactly what's driving them to extinction. Idiots demand bits of the tiger anatomy for "natural medicine" (read: impotency cures). Poachers supply them with their magical erection-granting kibbles & bits, slowly killing off the last of the species in the process, and making a tidy profit from their crimes.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
poaching is rampant there and i would not be surprised if some of the park officials are in on it. However, that's not the real cause. The real cause would be its demand in primarily oriental countries like China, Vietnam etc where they use tiger meat and bones (I think every part of their body) for medicinal/spiritual purposes. I think the open border into India's Himalayan neighbor Nepal has also affected Nepal's own tiger and rhino population. Hope the NGO's and the government clamps down these poachers. I am not sure what the remedy to the demand from the Oriental countries is besides Education and stricter rules about imports of the remains of these Endangered species.
If you've never worked on a wildlife preserve in a country like this, I guess it's hard to understand how understaffed and underfunded they are. I worked on a rhino preserve and these people were happy we brought boots, shovels and hoses for them to use. That's how little they had and how little funding they got. A man actually almost broke down into tears over a waterhose...imagine what they'd do with GPS.
Just because technology exists does not mean it is available.
If these animals are so economically valuable, why aren't we 'farming' them? I mean, instead of killing of the last 24 in the park, it seems like you should get much larger land, and raise the tigers, so you have several hundred of them, and you can fund the preservation of the tigers/elephants/whatever by selling off the body parts of a few per year.
It's like this - chickens, cattle and pigs are at very little risk of going extinct, *because* of their economic value. Why don't we apply the same principle to these endagered species to make them *not* endangered anymore? If some Chinese Billionaire wants to pay the equivalent of $1 Million USD to have a Bengal tiger rug, then shouldn't we be exploiting that by selling off the coat of one tiger and using the million bucks to fund raising more tigers?
It seems to me that *carefully managed*, very limited, legitimate, legal sale of such animal products can ensure the survival of those species, but by taking a stance of trying to completely outlaw all traffic in those products, we actually put those animals at *greater* risk, because farmers/ranchers do a much better job of managing their 'herds' than poachers do.
No farmer is going to kill off so much of his livestock that he doesn't have enough left for successful breeding, but poachers just kill whatever they can and take it.