Sunday, August 20, 2006

Sell the Tiger to Save It?

Barun Mitra's article in the New York Times argues that to save the tiger we will have to farm it and treat it like a commodity to make money out of it. All this for the lucrative Chinese trade in Tiger medicines? As pointed out in the recent CATT Alert #38 "The simplest and most viable solution is to leave wild tigers alone in the wild and better enforce the long-standing ban on trade in tigerparts. Wild tigers will do the rest. The only humans who will lose outwill be a handful of already-wealthy tiger farmers."
Having seen tigers in Bhandavghar, Kanha and Corbett National Parks in India, it will be a worlwide tragedy if these magnificent animals are hunted to extinction--and all just for someone's idea of a medicine. To farm them seems totally immoral--as I would argue is the farming of ANY animal for their parts.

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