India's tigers have been poached virtually to extinction in the past few years and are quickly running out of time. We have tiger sanctuary national parks that don't have a single tiger left. NDTV is India's leading news channel with an important media presence and if they get enough signatures, it might just make an impact on India's politicians.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/savetiger/sthome.aspx

Please help save these marvelous animals!

Thank you!

Reddy375

If they really want to save the tiger, the only way they will do it is to bring back a lawful hunting season on them. Can you imagine how much money they could charge for 10 or so permits? They could easily get more than $5,000,000 apiece for them. Haven't been able to legally take one in over 30 years and the folks with big money would jump through hoops to get a chance to go on a legal tiger hunt.

If the respective Governments would get together on this, they would have an incentive to preserve the habitat and to stop the illegal take for the Chinese Folk Medicine trade. Conservation through utilization is the only way they will keep the tiger from going extinct in the wild.

That being said, there is no way it will happen because the so called animal rights folks would pitch such a bitch that the governments would back down. So, I fully expect the tiger to go extingt in the wild in my lifetime. There are enough in zoos to keep the species viable, but they will become just like the Pierre David Deer and only exisit in zoos and parks.

Sad to see it happen, especially when it is so easy to rectify.

Mac

The problem is not a lack of legal hunting. It is poachers and habitat. Apparently, India is going to work on it a little more seriously.



Posted 02 March 2008 08:37
updated 3:03 p.m. CT, Sat., March. 1, 2008
NEW DELHI - The Indian government plans to spend more than $13 million establishing a special ranger force to protect the country's endangered tigers, following pressure from international conservationists to save the wild cats.

The funding proposed Friday by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram follows the announcement just weeks ago of a $153 million program to create new tiger reserves, underscoring renewed efforts by India's government to protect the big cats.

New estimates suggest India's wild tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the government-run Tiger Project said last month.

"The number 1,411 should ring the alarm bells ... The tiger is under grave threat," Chidambaram told Parliament during his budget presentation for 2008-2009.

Chidambaram said the National Tiger Conservation Authority would be granted about $13.15 million to "raise, arm and deploy" a Tiger Protection Force. While the budget is just a proposal at this stage, Parliament is widely expected to pass it without opposition later this month.

Protection from poachers
Conservationists welcomed the government's proposal, saying a new force would need to be specially trained and armed to protect tigers from poachers.

"They are finally addressing a very important problem — poaching," Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, said Saturday. "I would imagine that much of the existing system would be improved by the injection of the funds."

The Tiger Project plans to create eight new reserves to protect the tigers, covering an area of more than 11,900 square miles at a cost about $153 million. Private groups will contribute extra funding.

Some 250 villages, or an estimated 200,000 people, will be relocated under the plan. The government has promised each relocated family about $25,600.

The population of tigers in Asia is estimated at around 3,500 today compared to nearly 5,000 in 1997, according to Wright.

Unless the government drastically improves enforcement steps against poachers and illegal wildlife traders, the number of tigers will continue to dwindle, Wright said.

I agree with Wymple.

The Govt. has a budget of approx. $250000 per tiger per year. That is a lot of money and much more than what hunting can bring in. India has a lot of money due to rapid industrialisation .
Unfortunate this rapid growth is responsible for the diminishing popilation of the wildlife.

There is heavy deforestation, habitat loss and pollution.

So hunting is not the answer. Unfortunately, no one knows whats the answer. Poaching is rife and many locals and foreigners pay for it. Not to mention the common man in Vietnam and china.

But basically it all boils down to human greed.
And why blame only them?
If i were to PM all members that i could arrange a tiger 'hunt' for them for $3000, I wonder how many replies I would get.

quote:

So hunting is not the answer. Unfortunately, no one knows whats the answer. Poaching is rife and many locals and foreigners pay for it. Not to mention the common man in Vietnam and china.

Hunting, as proven in Africa, cuts down on poachers. It provides two benefits beyond additional revenue for their Fish & Game Department. First, it provides an incentive to locals to keep the animal around and carefully manage it. Second, it cuts down on poaching. Poaching is a huge problem in Africa, but in areas where hunting occurs the poaching is drastically less than areas where there is no hunting. Hunters spend lots of time in the bush and actively work to prevent poaching (removing snares, scaring poachers, destroying poaching camps, arresting poachers, etc.). I would assume it would work the same in India.

I could just be being optimistic here because I'd love to shoot a tiger, but if you don't involve other groups who are actively going to help manage the game animals and prevent poachers the tiger is not going to recover.

Africa doesn't have a almost 3 billion people in similarly sized as the Asian tiger habitat.

Your comparing apples to buckets of spam.

We have almost 5000 tigers in the United States. Maybe we should be working on a hunt?

quote:

Originally posted by D99:
Africa doesn't have a almost 3 billion people in similarly sized as the Asian tiger habitat.

Your comparing apples to buckets of spam.

So!? Because there is a surplus of people in India we're supposed to say "sorry tigers" and let them get wiped out of their natural habitat? Doesn't make sense to me, surely there is an alternative?

Poaching allows some to make money. There is little disincentive. It will take anti-poaching patrols that shoot to kill. It will take villagers able to see the tiger as a monetarily valuable annimal for the Hunter and thus for the villages, rather than as a killer of livestock and occasional human.