I’m not a big fan of John Stossel, but this time on 20/20 he was talking about saving endangered species. He claimed that farming American Bison saved them from extinction, and that the same should be done for tigers. Apparently, tiger bones are used in oriental medicines and tiger farmers would ensure that a supply of tigers would live on if the ban on trading in tiger bones was lifted.
I don’t know, tigers don’t seem like they would take to being farmed. Bison were herd animals and could live on a range all together quite happily. Tigers are loners by nature, and somehow keeping herds of them for slaughter just seems wrong. Besides, I understand that while the poaching of tigers is a problem, the bigger danger to them is habitat loss, which can’t be solved by farming them. Or can it?
From a moral perspective I fail to see the difference between herding tigers for parts and herding bison for parts. From a logistical perspective I’m having a tough time figuring out how you can herd tigers and still remain a profitable enterprise. As you say, they need a lot of space.
Odesio
This is nonsense. Farming bison certainly has helped increase their total population, but it was not what saved them from extinction in the first place (which was the creation of protected areas like Yellowstone, control of hunting, and the establishment of non-farmed captive populations).
As long as the carcass of a wild tiger represents a major windfall for a poacher, breeding them in captivity isn’t going to solve the problem. Tigers would be very expensive to raise in captivity - far more so than bison - given that they require huge amounts of meat. You would have to sell the tiger parts at a pretty high price in order to make back your investment. While farming them might bring down the price a bit by increasing supply, it’s not going to bring it down so much that a poacher (who has no expenses aside from his time, weapon, and ammo) won’t be able to make an attractive amount of money on killing a wild one.
The Amerian Bison Society, of which Teddy Roosevelt was a member, created the western reserves such as the National Bison Range in Montana - and stocked them with Bison from the Bronx Zoo’s breeding program.
Yes, it’s true, Montana Bison are really from the Bronx!
It’s gotta be easier than caring for those lion/leopard hybrids. They all look alike, so you have to put recognition symbols on each one, and it’s a real nuisance when the boss points at a new arrival and says “put a sign on the dotted lion!”
I don’t know why “herding them” is an issue; pigs and chickens aren’t herd animals either. Tigers breed well in captivity, so it’s just a matter of raising them for slaughter instead of for zoos. And of course it won’t do a thing for habitat loss, but certainly it will get rid of one real threat. We can eventually regrow jungle; extinction is forever.
Obviously, it’s going to be a quite expensive undertaking, but tiger bones are already hugely expensive and that doesn’t seem to be stopping the trade in them, any more than the high price of narcotics stops the trade in those illegal substances. The expenses of the poacher also include the chance of getting caught or killed in the effort. Moreover, the poacher is doing something illegal; that’s going to incur expenses every step of the way, as the tiger parts go through several hands before reaching market in Hong Kong.
The numbers may or may not work out to make it feasible; I think the larger point Stossel was making with the piece was that such rational if counterintuitive, market-based solutions are often ruled out without discussion, and that environmentalist groups should at least give it a try.
Chickens are social, granted they dont live in herds, they live in flocks. Roughly 6-12 hens per rooster is how they more or less sorted themselves out when we had several dozen.
You make a good point, as well as the fact that poaching is illegal and that’s a cost. But it still remains true that the marginal cost of production for a poached tiger is the cost of a bullet. Raising tigers is hideously expensive; they’re not HARD to breed, but the costs are sky-high. They eat huge amounts of meat, and for obvious reasons your enclosure security has to be pretty sharp or else you’ll soon be much more consumed by the enterprise than you might like, so to speak.
I’ll tell you this; I sure wouldn’t want to invest in it, economically speaking.
[ul]
[li]The cost of a quality hunting rifle and other hunting supplies (truck to haul the carcass, night vision, etc.).[/li][li]The cost of the time it takes to go hunting. Most likely it takes more than a few nights of looking to bag a tiger.[/li][li]The cost of damaged merchandise if you damage the tiger by incompetent hunting (multiple bullets ruin the pelt and break bones). [/li][li]The cost of avoiding/bribing wildlife wardens.[/li][li]The cost of maintaining a place in town to cut up a huge freaking animal (sure as hell ain’t gonna do it in the jungle). You know how much work it takes to debone a tiger? [/li][li]The cost of paying a butcher to do something illegal and keep quiet about it.[/li][li]The cost of avoiding/bribing local cops to keep quiet.[/li][li]The cost of shipping it to market. Do you pay off a ship’s captain as well as the customs people on both ends, or do you hide it inside of other stuff and hope to avoid getting caught?[/li][li]The cost of finding a retailer, and all the usual costs a retailer incurs.[/li][/ul]
Of course, all of the above won’t be done by one person; it’ll be done by a dozen or more people, each of whom are going to want a substantial profit for doing something that carries the risk of getting them put into a third-world jail or killed by rival poachers.
I’d suspect more than a few poachers have suffered the same fate. I’d take my chances with the cages instead of walking into the jungle with a rifle.
I probably wouldn’t either; but if someone wants to give it a go, why shouldn’t he have the chance?
[LIST]
[li]The cost of a quality hunting rifle and other hunting supplies (truck to haul the carcass, night vision, etc.).[/li][/QUOTE]
When your first item to a comment about “marginal costs” is something that** isn’t a marginal cost**, I’m not sure I really know how to answer that. I just don’t buy that it’s economically feasible.
In principle I agree someone should be allowed to try it.
The value of tiger parts is driven by superstition. People could simply choose to believe that only a freshly-killed wild tiger has special magical powers, and that would end the entire plan. If you’re dealing with an unreasonable appetite to begin with I don’t think the solution is to try to find alternate ways to feed it. If tiger skins were the problem then farming them might bring the value down, but in fact many poachers destroy the skin immediately to conceal evidence because selling the body parts for magical potions is more money for less risk. The biggest markets for tiger parts are actually in places where tigers live. People who allow superstition to guide them and don’t think that slaughtering tigers is a problem as it is already done today, would probably see very little value in imported farm-raised tiger parts for their various medicines. Take away the mystique and difficulty and danger in obtaining it, and it would no longer be magic. It might be a better approach to try to curb the demand through education and enforcing existing poaching and parts trade laws.
It’s far, far more difficult to domesticate and farm a large carnivore than a large herbivore. Not only are they more dangerous, but their feeding and care is much more expensive. You have to raise a whole herd of animals just to feed your herd of carnivores.
This probably explains why it’s never been done in human history.
