You say this like it’s a negative. I don’t see how a few immediate object lessons are such a bad thing.
I’m sorry if I didn’t make this clear, but Canada is not mostly tundra. It’s mostly boreal forest.
Yeah, I know. But check out that distribution map I linked to earlier. Does that look like Tigers roam the taiga of Siberia? Hell no. They don’t live in taiga, they live in temperate forests. Sure, those forests are colder than the jungles of India and SE asia, but they aren’t taiga.
No. I agree it’s a net positive.
As a bonus Timothy would never have been invited as a guest to the Letterman show to be introduced as: “a man who knows more about Siberian tigers in the Canadian wilds than anyone else.”
I’m paraphrasing Letterman’s intro re Tim and grizzlies from my unreliable memory. Actually I remember getting quite annoyed at Letterman when I watched it. Letterman deserves jail IMO.
Mmm… Taiga tiger, burning bright…
Who is this timothy guy?
For an interesting example of what can happen when an animal is introduced into a new environment, watch Cane Toads, which were brought to Australia to control the cane grubs.
Didn’t work.
Sure, natural processes cause things to change, not always for the worse, but mankind’s efforts to modify nature always seem to backfire on us.
Reminds me of an incident in Richard Brautigan’s novel, Confederate General at Big Sur. They have a pond where, at twilight, one frog starts to croak, then the millionth frog joins in, and the sound is deafening.
So the next time Jesse is in town, he stops at the pet store and picks up a couple of pet alligators, who are released into the noisy pond, which promptly falls silent.
“Well, that takes care of the frogs.”
“Yeah, there’s nothing in there now but alligators.”
That depends. Do they speak the language?
BRILLIANT!
And why the hell does Letterman deserve to punished for Timothy’s stupidity?
For encouraging him in his delusional belief.
If Letterman had a guest who claimed that he was able to jump off a tall building and land gently on the ground just by flapping his arms and Letterman let him demonstrate it by jumping from a high window in the TV studio, it would be not be all that different.
The worst thing about this case was that Treadmill convinced an airhead lady friend of his that he knew what he was doing. She got eaten with him.
Bad analogy. The guy had been living around bears for 12 years and was the expert in this case. Why would anyone think his actions were swayed by what Letterman said or did?
That’s irrelevant; the guy wasn’t killed on Letterman’s show. He was killed four thousand miles away, quite some time later.
“Encouraging a delusional belief” is not a crime.
What if we introduced Siberian tigers into the Canadian wilderness?
They would just replace the Saber-toothed Tiger. :smack:
Being someone who lives in Canada’s boreal forest, I’d prefer that the tigers be settled in the Tyandaga green space.
Just wanted to say…Hi Baker! And loved this series so far. 
As for the OP…well, I’m torn. I don’t think it would be a good idea on the one hand. A tiger, especially one of these big bastards, is going to be fairly dangerous to anyone moping about in the great white north. Just ask someone from India sometime how dangerous THEY think tigers are. My guess is that a tiger is going to be several orders of magnitude more dangerous to humans (and maybe more importantly to live stock) than a wolf pack is. And look at all the bitching about the re-introduction of wolves in the US (some fucking idiots are talking about hunting them again here because they killed a few cows! :mad: ).
By the same token, it DOES seem that it could work…and relatively speaking the northern Canadian territories ARE pretty wild and open. It would be a good thing for the tigers I have no doubt…and to be honest (as its not MY skin indangered), I’d be in favor if it if those folks in Canada were stupid enough to do it.
Anyone know if a Siberian tiger is more dangerous than a grizzly bear…or a polar bear? The Canadians have those already, and if they can live with them, maybe a few hundred tigers wouldn’t phase them either.
-XT
So, I take it they weren’t your cows.
And I don’t understand why people can’t seem to grasp that tigers introduced to the northern Canadian boreal forest are all going to die.
Siberian tigers don’t live in the northern boreal forest.
They would do much much better in the United States than Canada. There are only very limited portions of Canada they could survive in. Southern Ontario, southern British Columbia. They aren’t going to live on the ice and snow, or in the tundra or in the taiga. They live in temperate forests. “Siberian” tigers don’t live in what we think of as “Siberia”. They can’t live in Canada. If they were introduced to North America, it’s possible a portion of their range might extend to Canada, but it is a complete and utter fantasy to imagine all this “empty” Canadian wilderness that is prime tiger habitat. It is NOT.
Nope…not ‘my’ cows. However, most of them were killed on ‘my’ land…a.k.a. BLM land. Where ‘my’ wolves are running about.
To the ranchers who run their cattle on BLM land and then whine about their cattle getting munched (occationally…VERY occationally) by a wolf pack (I think there are all of around 1200 wolves in the US atm…as opposed to how many MILLIONS Of fucking cows?), I just say…tough titty.
-XT