I cried last night!
Due to mis management incorrect census & corruption it is now believed there may only be 1200 wild tigers in India....Twelve hundred
On two \"Project Tiger\" reserves there are no Tigers!
Project tiger has now been shut down, all warnings of extinction were ignored & \"Poo Pahed\" by officials who denied the reduction in numbers. The Scientists & experts were banned from the parks for making known their findings!

I have met 23 wild tigers. All 23 tigers will now be dead!!!!

A horrific lingering death by poison or gin trap or snare! How many cubs have starved to death while their mothers were in agony?

We must not let this happen.
And
The African endangered species must not be allowed to follow!

Having met these 23 individual tigers & watched a small part of their lives this has become personal to me.
The excitement of my first ever tiger meeting ,at 0530 on a misty Ranthambhore morning, is still clear in my mind.

If the tiger becomes extinct due to conflict with humans that is the way of Nature. Are we not meant to be the intelligent species of this planet though!
But! Poaching, killing for vanity, killing for gain, killing for medicine, killing for greed?????
It is the civilized world that need educating first, then the poachers, it is only right that they want better for their families.

We can help on safari.
We all resist tipping or buying that souvenir. But does it really matter? Don't give into begging when asked for money but ask what the beggar will do to earn your money! Put money into local rural communities for services! hire a donkey, hire a porter, hire a guide for an hour! Anything that will put money to the village without it being alms.
Pay a little extra for that badly carved wooden lion being sold, how long did you really have to work for that extra dollar it cost you?
This way, perhaps we can help the people & in doing so we can help the fauna so that the people see a long term gain & not a quick hit through poaching.

- Edited by kipper on 12.04.2007, 15:35 -
- Edited by kipper on 12.04.2007, 16:46 -

gosh kipper, it's so sad and it makes me furious when i think about all this stupidity which is going on in all these countries!
being it the cheetah, the lion, the big apes......not to mention all the small things which are out of public focus.
there are so many reasons to become desperate. it's humans who kill this very planet..........

could you please send me the article so that i can take it with me to a professional travel exhibition which i am going to participate in

from 16 until 18 april - next week!

there i meet with indian dmc's and can directly make them aware that they are watched carefully by outsiders who care about their wildlife!

Thanks Pippa.
The information came from a BBC Wildlife Bristol production screened last night.
I am unable to find figures to confirm the problem but a number of sites to substantiate the report.
A truck containing 39 tiger 500 leopard & 300 other skins were found at a routine border search.

[URL=http://www.eia-international.org/files/reports62-1.pdf]EIA Report[/URL]

[URL=http://www.salvonet.com/eia/cgi/news/news.cgi?a=237&t=template.htm]Wild Life Protection Society of India[/URL]

[URL=www.discoveryinitiatives.co.uk/media/1311.pdf]Info Here[/URL]

[URL=http://www.salvonet.com/eia/cgi/news/news.cgi?a=237&t=template.htm]Environmental Investigation Agency[/URL]

[URL=http://ranthambhore.blogspot.com/2006/05/third-tiger-crisis-2003-onwards.html]Ranthambhore[/URL]

[URL=http://www.indianjungles.com/070205.htm]Indian Jungles.com[/URL]

Kipper:

This is so infuriating. Education, as Pippa says, is so important. But so are laws that put some teeth in them that will put people away for the horrible things they are doing. The word will get around very quickly to those who perpetrate this kind of thing.

About three years ago I was in Amboseli when a great elephant matriarch was speared seven times. She managed to pull out five of the spears, but two were deeply embedded in her skull. The vet was called. Four men couldn't pull the spears out, they were so deeply embedded. The had to knock the spears with a "spanner" to loosen them first so they could retrieve them. Her tusks had also been broken. I sent pictures of this elephant to KWS and many others. I was told that "not much could be done". However, I learned later that two men had indeed been arrested, done time in prison and when they got back to their village were telling everyone not to do what they did because prison was awful. It has helped because there have been far fewer spearings since then.

Last week I wrote Martyn Colbeck, who does the Echo of the Elephants, movies and challenged him to do a real truthful thing about what happens to elephants continent wide. I got a nice reply from his Director, Mike Birkhead. Mike is apparently also involved in movies on the tigers in India. Thus I have just pasted your info above and sent it to him. If he wasn't aware of it already, he will be through your news.

Should you wish to look up his work you can go to: http://www.mikebirkhead.com/

Thanks Jan
The program mentioned on the Mike Birkhead web site, "Battle to Save The Tiger". is the the one that I mention, screened on BBC2, 2100, here in the UK.

I\'ve been in touch with a uk based Indian wildlife charity that provides help to the wild life services, water & schools for the villages.The founder has just returned from India.

Quote:-
We visited Ranthambhore for a few days on this visit.The forest department are tring to stop the poaching,we donated a few cycles and binos to help them perform there jobs that bit more effectively.I did see 5 new Tiger cubs in 2 areas and hopefully they will live to have a full life and have cubs of there own.