Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Bye-Bye Tigers

India may be bringing up the issue of Chinese poaching of their dwindling tiger populations in bilateral talks this week, but does anyone think the Chinese are going to do anything about it? With traditional Chinese medicine using rare cat products such as tiger penis soup for fertility, with rising prosperity in China leading to a huge surge in demand for such dubious products, and with high-ranking members of the Chinese government major consumers of them, I think we are seeing the last wild tigers roam the Earth. I don't know much about captive breeding programs for tigers, but I hope they work because otherwise we are going to lose the great cats.