Sunday, January 03, 2010

A sad tale

Following the holiday that was New Year’s Day and then the weekend, there is nothing of local interest to report. So just to stop you thinking that maybe I have not bothered to get up this morning I am posting this sad tale.

image Over the past century, the world's population of tigers has been reduced by 95% as a result of hunting and poaching for their body parts, which are used in traditional Asian medicine. There are now only around 3,200 tigers left on the planet.

Of its nine main sub-species, three – the Bali, Caspian and Java tigers – are now extinct, while there has been no reliable sighting of a fourth, the South China tiger, for 25 years. This leaves the Bengal, Amur, Indochinese, Sumatran and Malayan tigers, the numbers of which, with the exception of the Bengal and Indochinese, have been reduced to a few hundred per species.

In recent years conservationists have achieved some noticeable success in halting the decline in tiger numbers. For example, they helped to halt hunting of the Amur tiger, which lives in eastern Russia. Its numbers had dropped to a few dozen. Today there are around 500 Amur tigers, thanks to conservation measures introduced by the Russian government.

However, over the past two or three years, levels of poaching have risen again while habitat problems have added to the stress on tiger numbers.

The tiger has therefore been put on the top of the list of the ten most endangered species for this year which just happens to be the Chinese year of the tiger. Wouldn’t it be sad if the only tigers left in the world were either in zoos or were stuffed toys in shops?

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