OMG did you know there are only about 5000 tigers left in the world

[CountessDracula]

dd adores tigers and dh has adopted one through the WWF. The stuff came through today and I was totally shocked to read this. They will be extinct in my lifetime. Most of the adoption money goes towards preventing poachers

Very sad they are so beautiful

Sadly, yes!

DS2 loves tigers and adopted one through WWF too. We do the 'Walk for Wildlife' every October to raise money for WWF's work. Details of the walks are on their website if anyone is interested in taking part.

that is so sad. why are they all disappearing?

what is really sad is that no one seems to care. look how many posts this thread has got. Tigers are often killed by poachers and by local people in revenge for livestock killed. As the wild areas in
India get smaller and farmland gets bigger, tigers are more likely to kill livestock and then get killed themselves. And the demand for tiger parts in Chinese medecine drives the poachers on. We really are in danger of losing tigers in the wild for good. We have also adopted one from WWF.

i mean medicine. Dear oh dear.

bump this

at this
yes they are lovely
so they will soon be extinct

you can adopt a tiger [or another animal - see MN WWF ad!] from WWF for as little as a pound a month - a paltry some [though more is even better] I would urge as many people to do so as possible.

Even worse, there are apparently only FOUR northern white rhinos left in the wild. Four. And the ones that are left are in an area controlled by the Lord's Resistance Army, a feared guerilla group that recruits child soldiers and murders civilians (and park rangers).

But, extraordinarily, a conservationist actually got to speak to the head of the LRA and persuaded him they needed to protect the rhinos. I hope it bloody works.

Orang utangs are dying out too, which is very sad. They're being made extinct partly because of the palm oil trade - FoE is doing a lot about it.

red pandas are having a tough time too

bloody animal loving arts grads. And what is happening to my spelling today? paltry some ??

bump

I went to a very interesting talk by a tiger conservationist when we lived in Indonesia. The tigers there are under threat from growing populations and the need for more farmland. The conservationists worked with the villagers to try to get them to understand the importance of tigers. So they'd employed some of the villagers in ranger-type jobs and also given them the means to monitor what the tigers were up to via cameras dotted about. (Saw an amazing film in which a man walked along a footpath followed less than 30seconds later by a tiger which then hid under a bush and waited there patiently until another villager walked by, totally unaware of the massive creature just feet away!) If the villagers feel they have some control over their environment they are much less likely to want to get rid of the tigers.

There is also a tolerance point of what the locals will put up with. I forget the details but as long as there are fewer than a certain number of encounters between man and beast, man will live side by side with them. Eventually it is hoped that tourism will also provide an income to local people.

Another issue with the loss of tigers and orang utans in Indonesia is the killing of mother animals so the babies can be stolen. This is often done by military officers who see it as a way of supplementing their income when they sell the creatures on as pets in the larger cities.

interesting suedonim - i agree the tourism [eg nature tourism, spotting tigers etc] would help the locals bring in an alternative income which would motivate them to preserve the wildlife. That must be the way forward. I fear it is too late for tigers tho.