India

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forest of the night.
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake

I contemplate the irony of my situation. I am standing in the anteroom of the former hunting lodge of the Maharaja of Jaipur, now a reception area of the hotel where I am staying. It is Friday morning, 4 A.M., and still pitch dark outside. A small crowd is milling about the room, murmuring with nervous anticipation. Casting a frozen snarl of disapproval toward the entire scene is a huge stuffed Bengal tiger, mounted on a pedestal. On the walls behind the beast are photographs of British royalty from the Raj era, atop elephants. Sprawled on the ground in front are their hunting "trophies," a dead tiger for each king, queen, or duke, such as the case may be.

Our location is northern India, the scruffy little town of Sawai Madhopur, in the state of Rajasthan. We are about to begin the "trip of a lifetime" and embark on a tiger safari in Ranthambore National Park. However, on this safari we will ride in jeeps instead of on elephants, and shoot with a camera, not a gun. Our photographs, therefore, will look very different from those currently on the walls. The tigers will be alive! But for how long?

Hunting tigers anywhere in the world is illegal. Unfortunately, laws are seldom enforced where tigers live. As a result Panthera tigris is in serious trouble. The world's most charismatic animal faces certain extinction in the wild without drastic intervention. The story is grim. In 1900 there were an estimated 100,000 tigers in east Asia. Today there are fewer than 3,500 hanging on in scattered reserves that have more poachers than rangers. There are more pet tigers in Texas than wild tigers in the world. The tiger's former range included 24 countries. Today tigers are found in only 13 and some of those are questionable. The Bali tiger was declared extinct in 1940, the Javan and Caspian tigers in the 1970s, and most recently the Cambodian tiger in 2010. The Chinese tiger has not been spotted in the wild in 25 years and is functionally extinct, though about 65 remain in captivity.

The tiger's dilemma is due to habitat loss and a drastic increase in poaching to supply Asia's expanding middle class with animal parts for traditional medicine. Tiger penis soup to make the Chinese more virile-just what the world needs! This would hardly be acceptable if the treatments were effective, which they most assuredly are not. So the tiger, and other endangered species, are being exterminated to placate ignorance and superstition in Asia.

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Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forest of the night. What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? William Blake I contemplate the irony of my situation. I am standing in the anteroom of the former hunting lodge of the Maharaja of Jaipur, now a reception area of the hotel where I am staying. It is Friday morning, 4 A.M., and still pitch dark outside. A small crowd is milling about the room, murmuring with nervous anticipation. Casting a frozen snarl of disapproval toward the entire scene is a huge stuffed Bengal tiger, mounted on a pedestal. On the walls behind the beast are photographs of British royalty from the Raj era, atop elephants. Sprawled on the ground in front are their hunting "trophies," a dead tiger for each king, queen, or duke, such as the case may be. Our location is northern India, the scruffy little town of Sawai Madhopur, in the state of Rajasthan. We are about to begin the "trip of a lifetime" and embark on a tiger safari in Ranthambore National Park. However, on this safari we will ride in jeeps instead of on elephants, and shoot with a camera, not a gun. Our photographs, therefore, will look very different from those currently on the walls. The tigers will be alive! But for how long? Hunting tigers anywhere in the world is illegal. Unfortunately, laws are seldom enforced where tigers live. As a result Panthera tigris is in serious trouble. The world's most charismatic animal faces certain extinction in the wild without drastic intervention. The story is grim. In 1900 there were an estimated 100,000 tigers in east Asia. Today there are fewer than 3,500 hanging on in scattered reserves that have more poachers than rangers. There are more pet tigers in Texas than wild tigers in the world. The tiger's former range included 24 countries. Today tigers are found in only 13 and some of those are questionable. The Bali tiger was declared extinct in 1940, the Javan and Caspian tigers in the 1970s, and most recently the Cambodian tiger in 2010. The Chinese tiger has not been spotted in the wild in 25 years and is functionally extinct, though about 65 remain in captivity. The tiger's dilemma is due to habitat loss and a drastic increase in poaching to supply Asia's expanding middle class with animal parts for traditional medicine. Tiger penis soup to make the Chinese more virile-just what the world needs! This would hardly be acceptable if the treatments were effective, which they most assuredly are not. So the tiger, and other endangered species, are being exterminated to placate ignorance and superstition in Asia.

© Danny Kimberlin 2015