The Great India Tiger

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Tigers ( Panthera Tigris) the biggest and majestic in the cat family
are one of the earliest inhabitants of Indian Forests and India has
the proud position of having both the biggest cat family members
inhabiting our forests. Tiger is found only in Asia and not found in
Africa. Tigers can attain a weight of about 500 pounds and a length
(including the tail ) 10 feet. It is so huge it can attack human
beings and eat them and hence there is considerable enmity towards
tigers by general population. Actually Mao Tse Tung has ordered the
extermination of all tigers in China during Cultural Revolution.
The Tiger unlike the Lion is a solitary animal and the male and female
join together only for mating. After the birth of the cubs the mother
keeps them with her till they attain an age of two and half and then
send them away to mend their own ways. The tiger population in India
is spread out in all most all India states from Kerala in the south to
West Bengal in the east. The royal Bengal tigers can be found in the
forests of Sundarbans where they sometime attack and kill even human
beings.

Conservationists are saying that "India's tigers are facing their
severest crisis with only between 1,300 and 1,500 left in the wild,
less than half the population of endangered big cats previously
estimated " These estimates were arrived at by the Wild Life Institute
of India which was made after taking out a sensus of the tigers in
Indian forests. Valmik Thapar, an expert and naturalist says that
"These are estimates done with what the government considers a robust
scientific process and is a benchmark" Valmik Thapar, a renowned
natural historian and tiger expert, told a WWF meeting called to
discuss the tiger's plight.

The Chinese traditional medicines use tiger's bones and other parts,
Hindus having preference for the Skin both for religious and
decoration and nails again for decoration purposes have made tiger to
disappear from the face of earth. Tigers bone, penis and testicles are
supposed to increase the potency of the man's sexual prowess, as
believed by the Chinese and hence there is great demand for these
parts in China, Hong Kong etc and which in turn tigers to the
poacher's guns.

Tigers are vanishing because of many reasons which include the
reduction in their habitat, reduction of forest area and encroachment
of forest lands, cutting down trees and hence the hiding of them is
reduced, poisoning by the intruders, non availability of food and
water, higher population density in their place of occupation,
poaching, drug peddlers, timber mafia etc.

Thapar said India should crackdown on poachers and break open the
organized criminal poaching gangs -- in the manner Kenyan authorities
did in the late 1980's when they took a zero tolerance approach to
elephant poachers.
"We require the same political will," said Thapar. "This is not the
moment to do a post mortem, it is the moment to persuade everybody who
cares that job number one is flush out all those who poach.

Now unless the Central and State Governments take stern measures to
control the poaching and killing the Tigers, the next generation
Indians and world will know about tigers only in Text books and may be
in some zoos in an old and emaciated condition.

Probably even human race may not live for another hundred years if the
pollution, population explosions and war mongering does not cease.