Beasts of burden
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But this view was seriously undermined this summer when an extremely rare Sumatran tiger was killed and dismembered in a zoo in Indonesia, and sold on the black market, a barbaric act which left zoologists baffled. Taking an even more sinister twist, the criminals believed to be responsible for the crime were a group of young Indonesian biologists and vets who had been training with the tiger at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The slaying of the tiger, which was listed as "critically endangered", was obviously a major setback for conservation and spurred the ZSL into appealing for tougher enforcement to deter the grisly practice.
Although perhaps the fact that the number of tigers alive today has plunged beyond belief should be enough to spurn "collective enforcement" and it should not take such a tragedy to spark the push.
Unfortunately this "tragic incident" is not an isolated case, as tigers elsewhere are being "thinned-out" by conservation blunders. Or perhaps more cynically, like in the case of the Sumatran tiger in Indonesia, conservationists working in collusion with corrupt officials, are the biggest culprit in wild beast decimation.
Earlier this year an investigation conducted by the National Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, an Indian government agency, reported that the excessive amount of sedatives being used to sedate tigers is contributing to the sharp fall of the animals in India. As conservationists sedating beasts to fit them with radio tracking devices, are making it easier for hunters to poach the docile cats.
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| Their future looks bleak. |
Criminal gangs, corrupt officials and conservation failings are not the only factors contributing to the devastating drop in endangered beasts. Climate change, a man-made product spurned from greed, is arguably wild animals' biggest enemy. In Bangladesh, where as many as a dozen tigers are being bludgeoned to death by villagers every year, the number of Bengal tigers in existence is severely declining. Their demise is not only being blamed on forest officials failing to inform villagers on how to deal with roaming beasts properly, but also on the changing climate. A rise in the number of natural disasters afflicting the area, like cyclones and tidal surges, a product of global warming, are destroying wildlife populations, including tiger's prey. The lack of food is forcing tigers to venture away from their forests in search of food in nearby villages.
Whilst relatively small proportions of people are outright criminals, indisputably causing the number of threatened animals to shrink by barbarically killing and traded their decimated bodies for dirty money; beasts' slow decimation from existence is representative of a wider society. The destruction of habitats caused by "natural" disasters, an indirect result of climate change, is disrupting the food cycle of much wildlife and subsequently "killing off" many endangered animals like tigers. Failings and even corruption within some conservation organizations, and many of the informed choosing to "turn a blind eye", are also guilty of causing wild animal decimation. With all these sources fighting against them, threatened creature's slippery slope to extinction regrettably slides closer, unless some radical changes are made.
