And I may have gotten here just in the nick of time! Panthera tigris is on the brink. 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 3,000, barely hanging on in scattered reserves that have only token law enforcement. The tiger's former range included 24 countries. Today tigers are found in only 13 and several of those are dubious. The light went out for the Bali tiger in 1940, the Javan and Caspian tigers in the 1970s, and most recently the Cambodian tiger in 2010. The Chinese tiger probably exists only in a few zoos.

A ray of hope appeared in the seventies when India's Project Tiger resulted in a decade of population increases. But this was short lived. With the passing of Indira Gandhi, an era of enlightened conservation came to an end. And tiger numbers began to plummet once again. This is largely due to a surge in poaching to supply eastern Asia's burgeoning middle class with animal parts for traditional medicine. Tiger penis soup to make the Chinese more virile. Just what the world needs! A single tiger can bring $150,000 from this lucrative market. Every ounce of this magnificant beast is sliced up or ground up and sold for something. This would hardly be acceptable if the treatments were effective, which they are NOT. So, much of the world's wildlife (tiger, elephant, panda, and many others) is being exterminated simply to placate Asia's ignorance and superstition!

For information on how you can help save wild tigers go to tigersforever.org. Please don't wait!

 

Bandhavgarh National Park, above, is the one place in India where tiger safaris still take place on elephants instead of vehicles. Cameras only!