FOXSYLVANIA

– – As we are about to enter the Year of the Tiger, it’s important to remember that the commercial tiger trade is threatening the big cats with extinction, with only some 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild, nearly half of them in  India.

The tiger population is down from 100,000 worldwide a century ago due to growth in the human population and a demand in China, Vietnam, and Laos for tiger parts to be used in folk medicine.

Environmental activists are also worried about private ownership of tigers in the United States, where more than 5,000 tigers are believed to be in private hands as backyard pets or roadside zoo attractions.  Now tigers are often too dangerous to handle after six months of age, after which point they risk exploitation as they outgrow their usefulness.  While 26 states ban private ownership of tigers, nine states, including North and South Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin  have no regulations at all!

The highest number of captive tigers are found in Texas, which has regulations on tiger ownership but rarely enforces them.  China has nearly 6,000 tigers in captivity, and is trying to stamp out the tiger trade.  A growing private industry of  underground “tiger farms” in Asia, however, is putting new pressure on the endangered species as marketing tigers tends to stimulate and sustain demand for them…

This entry was posted on February 13, 2010 at 12:45 am and is filed under animals, body parts, deplorable practices, endangered species, rare animal. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: the tiger trade, tiger farms, Year of the Tiger