Indian Tiger Park Now Tiger-Free 170
Panna National Park is now officially tiger free making it the second Indian tiger sanctuary to no longer have a tiger population. A census was conducted in the park, after authorities reported no Bengal Tiger sightings for a long time. Three years ago the park had a population of 24 tigers; however, none were found this year. Forest minister Rajendra Shukla is optimistic about the news and says, "Panna is our only park which has lost on this count. Three of state's reserve forests — Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Pench — have been adjudged among the best managed tiger reserves in the country."
What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm assuming too much; I was sick the day they taught tiger maintenance at tiger school.
Electronic tracking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw an article about this about a year ago on TV. The tigers are being illegally captured for their skins and all. This has been going on for years, but the Indian government has kept denying it was happening, and did nothing about it. Now we have the result: a tiger-free tiger park.
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Poaching. Pure and simple. And these governments simply don't set their priorities on conserving endangered species. First they tend to enrich themselves, next they enrich their friends and associates, and if they EVER get done serving their own interests, the rest of what's left over goes to the people. They probably have no idea of what a budget committee is and no public involvement.
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans are destroying everything natural in this world. I just hope we destory things faster so that the Earth can wipe us out and then start over with some newer species that will hopefully not rip the planet apart the way we do. The way we handle everything natural (trees, animals, air, water, soil), we deserve to be added to the list of species that have gone extinct.
What's really amusing is watching people try to rationalize why they deserve to exist. Right, because the species that chooses to force animals to mate in cages in order to be mass-slaughtered for food and clothing, the species that tears down forests to clear space for agrigulture and cities, the species whose members will literally do anything to "get ahead" of their neighbour in terms of money and power, the species who does nothing more than crave constant entertainment and shoveling their faces with as much food as they can get their fat hands on... yes, surely this is the species that deserves to dominate the planet.
Of course, the most disgusting and saddening thing is that almost all people don't see anything wrong with us as a species. That somehow since we're just flesh and blood, everything we do is "natural". Yeah ok. Go back to drinking your Coke or Pepsi. It has absolutely no benefit to your body. But do it anyway, because it tastes good. That's all that matters.
sad (Score:1, Insightful)
Magnificent animals.
Meanwhile the human population of India goes exponential.
Bribes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Poaching. Pure and simple. And these governments simply don't set their priorities on conserving endangered species.
In addition to this, maintaining any kind of boundary around a tiger preserve is going to be a costly, manpower intensive operation. Likely the park didn't get that kind of staff or budget, and left the gate open, so to speak.
Tigers are large. They're territorial apex predators. Each adult male needs lots and lots of room to himself, which means a park of a couple dozen is going to cover a wide territory. Plus, I doubt the park was at capacity with 24, so it probably was set aside with more room than the bare minimum for its now departed population.
As a result, the park's borders are going to be long. Unless they have scads of park rangers, or whatever they're called in this case, they can't police the entirety of it. A poacher could get in unopposed. And given the rarity of the cats, poaching them is probably lucrative enough that they can bribe the, at most, one or two officials who might see them to look the other way.
The Tiger (Score:3, Insightful)
William Blake
Given that I'm a strong environmentalist my bias is unabashedly strong, but as a confirmed atheist even I can say that if we loose this species by way of our ignorance and greed we may have grounds for establishing original sin in our kind.
Re:if evolution (Score:1, Insightful)
Um, evolution, unlike an God or such, isn't right or wrong so there's nothing wrong with saving species that are dying.
Or are you trying do be funny?
Re:Tiger park profit (Score:3, Insightful)
The free market in action! The invisible hand!
Re:What the fuck (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing about a lot of Chinese herbal remedies is that the ones have a big fuss made over them, were the ones recommended for the Emperor and the aristocracy.
You know what's also supposed to be a good medicine for building yang in Chinese medicine? Walnuts. But that's clearly not good enough, not special and unique enough, for some royal bastard. You're an important guy, you have to go have some sentient being killed to prove it. And then because you are an important guy, everyone else wants to follow in your footsteps.
(Of course, the same applies in our culture. Know what's a good treatment for heart disease? A diet based around whole plant foods, exercise, and stress reduction. But that's clearly not good enough, not special and unique enough, for some master-of-the-universe type. You're an important guy, you have to go treat your body like shit until you need the bypass surgery -- despite the fact that its benefits are questionable [businessweek.com]. But at least with bypass surgery, your death or your case of "pump head" [about.com] only directly affects you, whereas using tiger penis to treat your impotence has a hell of an impact on the tiger.)
cost benefit analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
Start guarding the park. anyone found inside for any reason without evidence of poaching will be killed on sight. People found poaching will be horribly public tortured for a month and then executed. Put severed heads on stakes around the borders of the park. Anyone found with tiger parts in the country will be immediately executed. Quite simply, they need to make entering the park seem like a automatic death sentence. Until they show a will to go farther than the poachers, they will lose and tigers will die.
Yeah, sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
They should have evolved a bulletproof skin, a gun on their forehead and a lawyer on their back.
One to protect them from direct attack by humans, one to protect their home with force and the third to do the same - only in court.
And even that probably wouldn't do them much good considering that "civilized" humans had up until recently found "local" humans to be less than those tigers and little more than apes.
When I say "civilized" and "local" I mean white and brown.
Heck! White humans have nearly killed off an entire continent's population of red humans - who had guns and horses and whatnot...
And oversized cats should "evolve".
Yeah, sure...
Re:What the fuck (Score:3, Insightful)
First they tend to enrich themselves, next they enrich their friends and associates, and if they EVER get done serving their own interests, the rest of what's left over goes to the people.
Well, at least we've exported American Democracy to one place in the world!
Re:Bribes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly that could be true.
Unlike cops in countries like UK and USA, Indian cops don't get paid that much. Neither do they have great insurance coverages: a measly $2,500 is paid to their family if they are killed. Add to that weapons that are antiquated even by 1940s standards. So, you have deadly combination of corruption.
Why would any fool throw away his life for a miserable tiger? So that his family suffers?
No. It would be far better to make sure he's alive & safe & rich. So a tiger gets killed: so what?
Re:cost benefit analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
Start guarding the park. anyone found inside for any reason without evidence of poaching will be killed on sight.
As a positive side effect evolutionary pressure will get us rid of tourists with bad orientation and inability to read maps.
Re:cost benefit analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
The Market will decide! (Score:3, Insightful)
Obvious isn't it? "The Market will decide". This famous beastie called the market will decide what survives and what doesn't... and in India where there's a fair few people living on a dollar a day (say a hundred million or so people) then the idea of making a couple of thousand dollars for a days work hunting down and killing (poaching) a tiger seems quite attractive. What would you do for 6 years your current salary as a day's work?
India - developing country - limited resources - can't fund its nature reserves or equip its park rangers like a western country might, versus a lot of folk who see an opportunity to make several years wages in a day.
The west has to take a lot of the blame for reducing the numbers down to where they are right now, hunting tigers in India was big sport at the turn of the last century.
In what sense is it a tiger park, without tigers (Score:1, Insightful)
Hyde Park in central London is as much a tiger park as the one in India. No doubt my back garden could be a hippopotamus reserve too.
This makes India the laughing stock of the world. It is difficult to see how they could be more inept.
Still, they don't care. More space to build the high rises and shopping malls now.
Poaching and the rise of china too. (Score:4, Insightful)
The salary and benefits of a typical forest ranger in India is about 250$ a month, while his nephew in the city with barely passable English makes some 700$ a month in IT, phone bank, help desk jobs and more if technically qualified. Any wonder the warden turns a blind eye to poaching and accepts bribes?
Re:ridiculous (Score:1, Insightful)
The only remedy has got to be education at every level to convince people that a) tiger penises don't make you more virile and b) if people keep demanding tiger penises, there won't be any left for those who need them most (i.e., the lady tigers).
Perhaps films with plotlines involving men becoming permanently infertile and impotent due to rhino horn and tiger genitals.
Maybe someone can invent 'synthetic tiger-willy', rumoured to be 100 times more potent than real tiger-willy.
Subtle media association of 'tiger' with 'incredibly, flamboyantly, irredeemably gay'. And 'rhino horn' with 'likes to suck off men'.
Maybe even some boring, old-fashioned, public information films about the plight of the tiger, unscrupulous poachers and the scam charlatans selling the 'remedies'â"aimed at the end market, not the country of origin.
Re:I am not offering a defense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition to this, maintaining any kind of boundary around a tiger preserve is going to be a costly, manpower intensive operation.
And if there's one this India lacks, it's manpower.
You go first (Score:4, Insightful)
You go first. Seriously. Go kill yourself and reduce the burden on the planet. Put your money where your mouth is. If you have kids, kill them too. And everyone you love. No? You don't want to? Then go fuck yourself. I'm sick of people like you who project their own feelings of shame and inadequacy on the entire population.
Have a great day,
-b
Re:if evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Tigers aren't going extinct, they're becoming a captive species.
The largest population of tigers in the world is in the USA. Hell, there are more tigers in Texas than there are in the wild.
It's weird, sick and sad in equal measure. Poor bastards. This international symbol of power and grace is being wiped out in the wild by fear, ignorance and superstition and becomes little more than a colourful pet for rich, fat americans.
Re:What the fuck (Score:1, Insightful)
This is the part I never understand. What on earth are they poaching the tigers for?
For quack herbal medicine in places like China, and elsewhere.
Re:What the fuck (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah. So idiots buy the dead tiger parts. That explains it.
Re:You go first (Score:1, Insightful)
While I don't necessarily agree with his entire spiel, you missed the point entirely.
Sure he's disappointed with us as a species, but he's not necessarily saying we should all kill ourselves. But as a poster just a little above mentioned:
"Nevertheless, intelligent beings that refuse to question their way of living by looking at it from a different angle are not so bright in my humble opinion"
He's questioning our constant overbearing self-destructive behaviour and the fact that we try to justify this behaviour with a "we're an intelligent species so we're doing what is natural" line, when it is very apparent that many of us are not.
Re:What the fuck (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, but you don't want just any manpower here. I suspect being a park ranger in a tiger preserve is one of those jobs that requires more than just a week of on the job training to do. Particularly since it offers several ways to fuck up and die if you aren't careful and knowledgeable about the risks. Never mind that you have to pay the rangers enough that the poachers can't bribe them easily, so it's not a situation where you can throw legions of underpaid unskilled workers at the problem and expect it to go away.
And before somebody busts out the "it's the third world, silly" argument, even in the furthest parts of rural India, a government operation like this is going to be bound by a certain level of CYA oversight. If the local management decides to hire any old idiot to do a dangerous job, and said idiot gets mauled, there will be consequences coming down from higher up for the negligent fool who put him in that position in the first place. Conversely, the more lawless the region, the more likely the negligent fool will be getting a visit from the many irate relatives of the deceased.
So no, the fact that India has a lot of people does not help this situation in the slightest, and if anything makes the problem much worse - try to imagine the difficulty of establishing and maintaining a large nature preserve in a country of 1+ billion spread over an area smaller than the US.
Re:What the fuck (Score:3, Insightful)
From personal experience, since 0>0 is false, I still do not see the logic. You could give these guys shavings from a slashdotters toenails and they'd never be able to tell the difference.