ANNOOOLAND

weeps for...

Ann-Dangered Annimals

Will it always be so that man's insatiable whims and fancies would
drive other men towards destroying life at all cost for the sake of
money…and then more money?

"There never was a worst moment for a Tiger…if I was a Tiger, I won't
know if I'd live to the next day, because EVERYTHING is wrong!"
Valmik Thapar - who is the driving force in the long-running
campaign in India to push apathetic lawmakers to save tigers
from rapacious poachers.

Predator and prey, the tiger is a wild and magnificent animal, only hunting to eat or feed its young and it never kills for pleasure or sport. The Tiger doesn't carry a gun! Wild and free, God's creature, but now hunted all the time to feed the traditions of the Chinese in the manufacture of folk medicine. The bones are supposedly a cure to satisfy the whims of hypochondriacs' fevers and rheumatism, the brain is erroneously thought to help against laziness and pimples; the nose epilepsy, the flesh asthma and the whiskers toothache. Tiger penis is thought to be an aphrodisiac. Though no such powers have ever been established, the demand for medicines containing tiger products continues to threaten the very existence of this incomparable animal. Having exhausted other wild tiger populations (China has only around 30 tigers left), the manufacturers of such traditional medicine have turned to India as their source of supply.

So long as the Chinese continue to buy and sell animal parts for their folk medicines, poaching will always be a tempting way to get rich fast.
 
I heard Thapar say,
"The forest communities used to believe that the Tiger was the link between God and Man for the Tiger is the guardian of the trees, the guardian of the forests, and even when the Tiger killed the folklore was about the wicked woodcutter that was killed because he was chopping down the trees".

Some men are trying to protect it but it seems an uphill climb for them. Many of the park rangers have been shot to death in the parks by poachers.
  Tigers are being murdered. Snares are hidden along favorite trails, where they can be easily trapped, and are then clubbed to death or shot. They've even come up with another method of trapping, by placing a poisoned goat as bait and when consumed, the Tiger will die a slow and agonizing death. Favourite drinking holes of the Tiger are also poisoned. Time is not wasted and the animal is quickly skinned and stripped.

Around 1992 Wildlife investigator Ashok Kumar seized 400 kilos of Tiger bones and skins in 'Operation Dragnet'. This was not the first but it was a large one. He also discovered that Tibet is the gateway to China in the bone smuggling business.

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