By marvelous fortuity or perhaps especially clever planning, International Tiger Day and World Ranger Day are two days apart on the calendar. On July 29th, the world pauses (one hopes!) to reflect on the magnificence of Asia’s great cat and remind ourselves that its fate is very much in human hands. On the 31st, we acknowledge the thousands of women and men working on the front lines of protecting the tiger and other imperiled species around the globe.
The connection is especially apt. Tigers, like all big cats, are threatened by people. We compete with tigers for space, clearing their forested habitat to make room for our crops and livestock. We hunt their wild food sources, depriving tigers of essential prey, and we kill them because they threaten our domestic livestock.
Finally, and most perversely, we kill tigers because there is an illegal market for their parts, including skins, teeth and claws as trinkets, and bones, organs, meat and just about everything else for supposed (and non-existent) medicinal properties or merely bragging rights.
[Read More...]