Montecore, the Roy Horn-mauling white tiger, will remain in his home at the Mirage Hotel, and will not be disciplined for his attack on his trainer. Details at Yahoo.
If these animals were "living wild and free", they wouldn't be. They'd be dead, from hunting/poaching and from man's acquisition of their hunting grounds. There are very places that tigers can even live at all, and the smaller big-cats (and the wild small-cats like the Ocelot) are in even more trouble from our encroachment.
The perfect world once existed, 2.5 million years ago...then Homo Ergaster left Africa...and 10,000 years ago the Ice Ages stopped. Everything's different now.
There's "controversy" right now over an effort to recondition tigers to the wild by teaching them to hunt all over again and depositing them on a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa (the controversy being that its an artificial sanctuary, with most of the species including the tigers transplanted). Personally, *anything* that keeps them alive is better than letting them die, or leaving them to be hunted. The caretakers of this effort are well aware that its an experiment, that can hopefully lead to new efforts to do the same in protected lands in Asia, provided they can get the governments of those lands to support the idea and protect it with more guards. The south africa land was easy to get because bad farming practices during the 1920s-1970s ruined it utterly. in fact, they figure its going to be 3-7 more years before the next phase of natural animals, the hyena and vulture scavengers, arrive to complete the circle.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: EXCELLENT!!
Date: 2003-10-14 10:27 am (UTC)The perfect world once existed, 2.5 million years ago...then Homo Ergaster left Africa...and 10,000 years ago the Ice Ages stopped. Everything's different now.
There's "controversy" right now over an effort to recondition tigers to the wild by teaching them to hunt all over again and depositing them on a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa (the controversy being that its an artificial sanctuary, with most of the species including the tigers transplanted). Personally, *anything* that keeps them alive is better than letting them die, or leaving them to be hunted. The caretakers of this effort are well aware that its an experiment, that can hopefully lead to new efforts to do the same in protected lands in Asia, provided they can get the governments of those lands to support the idea and protect it with more guards. The south africa land was easy to get because bad farming practices during the 1920s-1970s ruined it utterly. in fact, they figure its going to be 3-7 more years before the next phase of natural animals, the hyena and vulture scavengers, arrive to complete the circle.