International Tigers Day 2020 .Conserve our Tigers

International Tiger Day 2020

 These tigers  that they're producing  are worthless to the wild.  They're not genetically fit,  they're not behaviorally fit  to be reintroduced to the wild. Netflix's "The Tiger King:  "Murder, Mayhem and Madness"  gives viewers a look  into the world of big  cat ownership in America,  along with murder plots and  unironic leather fringe. 

But in the drama, it's easy to lose sight  of what's actually happening.  Big cats being bred, sold, and treated  as if they were everyday pets.  And these captive-bred animals  will never be released.  - They're no more useful  to tigers in the wild  than domestic dogs are  to wolves in the wild.  - To find out what captive breeding  does to these endangered  and threatened animals,  we talked to Dr. John  Goodrich, a chief scientist  at Panthera, the global wildcat  conservation organization.  Before we get into the  problems of captive breeding,  we hear the figure a lot that there are  more tigers in captivity  in the United States  than there are actually  living in the wild.  I was wondering if  there's any truth in it.  How hard is it to quantify actually  how many tigers are here, given  that this is a black market?  - You hear the number  five to 10,000 tigers  in captivity in the United States.  Nobody really knows, but it's probably  in the right order of magnitude,  'cause there's only about  4,000 tigers left in the wild.  But, the problem is there's  no tracking of these tigers.  Every single tiger should  be identified and tracked  from its birth to its death.  It's not a hard thing to do. 

Tigers are walking barcodes.  Each one is identified  individually by their stripes.  It's like a fingerprint.  - And one of the arguments that  these captive breeders make  is that, you know, if we're  having populations crash  in the wild, why not  breed them in captivity  and reintroduce them?  Why is that wrong-headed?  - There's two things that happen  with these captive-bred  tigers, and they're opposites.  One is inbreeding, low genetic diversity,  and that's primarily in white tigers.  All white tigers in captivity come from  a single white tiger captured  in India decades ago.  So, you can imagine those  tigers are very inbred.  But then the opposite happens,  where there's interbreeding  among subspecies of tigers,  and they even hybridize tigers  with lions and other species.  So, that makes these sort of genetic mutts  that are not of any use  whatsoever in conservation.  There are a number of different  extant sub-species of tigers in the wild.  There's the Siberian tiger up  in Russia and Northern China,  Indochinese tiger in Thailand,  Malay tiger in Malasia,  Sumatran tiger in Indonesia,  and then the Bengal tiger in South Asia. 

They have different adaptations  to their unique environments.  So, you wouldn't wanna take a  Siberian tiger, for example,  and reintroduce it, you know,  from the colds of Russia  to hot tropics of India or Sumatra.  Likewise, you wouldn't wanna take  a tiger that's either been  severely inbred from captivity,  or outbred, some of these hybrids,  and reintroduce it and  pollute the genetics  of the existing wild populations.  - Beyond the genetics, why  would it be so problematic  to reintroduce a tiger raised  in captivity into the wild,  just based on the behaviors  that it had developed  as it has grown up.  - Especially some of these  tigers from petting zoos,  or even some of the rescue centers,  they have an awful lot  of exposure to people. 
People are coming by,  visiting them every day,  people are feeding them every day,  and they learn to  associate people with food,  and they associate people with  play and all sorts of things.  So, if you were to release  one of those tigers  into the wild, in India, for example,  where you might have hundreds  of people per square mile  surrounding the national  park or tiger reserve  where you've released  them, you can imagine,  those tigers are just  gonna go right to people  looking for food, looking  for entertainment, whatever.  And then you'd have a big  problem on your hands.  So, people and tigers don't mix well.  Tigers are too big and too dangerous.

 - Are conservation groups breeding tigers  in a certain way such that  they can be reintroduced  to the wild and not corrupt the gene pool?  - Zoos that are accredited by AZA,  the Association for Zoos and  Aquariums, in North America,  are required to be part of what they call  the Species Survival Program.  So, any tigers in those  zoos are bred very carefully  to maintain their genetics,  to maintain their subspecies status,  but also to guard against inbreeding.  Theoretically, we could  take tigers from zoos,  build a captive breeding center,  and then start to breed tigers  so that cubs were produced  that were exposed to their  natural wild habitat,  exposed to natural prey, and hopefully  could eventually be  reintroduced into the wild.  But we usually don't wanna get there.  You know, that's the  absolute last-ditch effort,  where if it comes to reintroductions,  it's a bit of a Hail Mary.  - How does a program at a zoo  that is maintaining tigers  different from what we're seeing  in a show like "Tiger King"?  - First, zoos are not  breeding tigers for sale. 


They are breeding tigers to maintain  that genetic stock in captivity.  These petting zoos are  breeding tigers to make money.  So, they're trying to pump  out as many cubs as they can,  remember, the cubs are  only worth anything to them  in the petting zoo until  they're about four months old,  and then they become too dangerous  for the public to handle.  What happens to all those tigers?  We don't know.  That's a big concern.  Tigers breed really well in captivity.  So, it's easy for people  to take them, breed them,  produce more tigers, and everybody wants  that selfie with a tiger cub.  So, that compounds the problem,  but you can imagine this animal, you know,  in the wild, tigers need anywhere  from 10 to hundreds of square miles  that they cover over  the course of the year,  their home range, and  you can imagine an animal  that should be wandering  over that kind of area  in lush forests being  kept in a small cage,  they don't do too well. 

You know, so one of the  things the accredited zoos do,  beyond trying to having natural habitat  and large enough enclosures,  they do an awful lot  of enrichment where they're putting  different scents around  the cage every day,  giving the animals  different toys to play with,  different things to  explore, so the animals  are constantly stimulated  in ways they might  be stimulated in their natural habitat.  - Can you walk us  through what conservation  actually looks like out in the wild?  - All tigers need is  lots of inviolate space  with good habitat, high prey densities,  and to be left alone by  people, and they thrive.  Tigers are most threatened  by habitat loss,  and especially poaching.  Tigers are poached because  they're extremely valuable  on the traditional medicine market.  So, while the recipe for  tiger conservation is simple,  actually implementing it  can be pretty challenging. 

Tigers live in some of the most remote,  rugged, and difficult parts  of the world to access,  so the patrol teams that are out there  trying to protect tigers from poaching  have a really tough job ahead of them,  in just finding the poachers,  capturing the poachers,  and then, once captured,  you might be a week's walk into a forest,  you've gotta take them back out.  So, it's a pretty challenging task.  - And what about legal protections here  for tigers in the United States?  - So, tigers are on the United States  Endangered Species Act,  and that gives them  a certain amount of protection,  but what that means is they  can't be traded internationally,  and they can't be traded  across state borders.  At the state level, many states have laws  against owning big cats  and other wildlife species,  but many states allow it openly.  So, there is legislation  being pushed right now  to make it illegal for  private ownership of big cats  in the United States.  - You know, well, what could  we do with those tigers? 


Do we put them in better  homes in the United States?  Are there enough of those, given that  this black market is so big?  Would it be able to hold all of them?  - It's a really tough problem.  If we were to pass legislation today  that banned ownership of tigers,  there's a number of  different ways it could go.  You could start a phase-out period,  where maybe first these  places are all required  to spay and neuter their animals,  and then when their last  animal finally dies,  they close down.  If we were to just close it down  and try to find homes  for all those tigers,  where are you gonna put them?  You know, there's a lot of rescue centers  around the country, most of  those are at capacity already,  so the next choice would  be to euthanize them  in the way we do with an awful lot  of our surplus dogs and cats,  and that of course would be tragic,  but the cost of maintaining these tigers  is also exorbitant.  And, you know, for the  million dollars it costs  per year to run a rescue center,  we could protect so  many tigers in the wild.  So, there's trade-offs too.  It's a real moral dilemma. 

- Do you have any advice for as to  how people can be smarter  about finding good parks?  - It's pretty simple, actually.  You can just look for zoos  that are accredited by the AZA,  and the AZA has them  listed on their website.  If it's not on the list,  doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad zoo,  but then you'll need to dig deeper.  I mean, if you get to  take selfies with a tiger,  if you get to touch them, then no.  That's not a great establishment.  - I was wondering if you had any insights  as to how you might be able to tell  if a tiger has been  mistreated in captivity.  - Some obvious physical signs might be  a tiger that's extremely  thin or extremely fat,  or maybe shows some evidence of injuries.  But beyond that, you can learn  a lot from their behavior.  If a tiger looks peaceful and content,  it's probably peaceful and content.  If it's pacing around its cage  and showing other kinds  of neurotic behaviors,  then it's probably in too small of a cage,  it's not receiving enough stimulus. 

- We are gonna know the  answer to this question,  but would a tiger ever make a good pet?  - Absolutely not.  Think about having a 400-pound  cat with three-inch canines  and three-inch claws in your living room  or in your backyard, and  even a well-mannered,  completely non-aggressive individual,  obviously an animal that big  with that kind of weaponry  could hurt you without even trying to.