Living with Tigers - A Response

On September 14th at 8pm, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary called 'Living with Tigers'. This documentary chronicles the tale of two men who set on a quest to take two zoo born tigers and reintroduce them back into the wild. It was a feat that had never been done before, but there was a major caveat to their experiment. They would not attempt to reintroduce these tigers back into the wilds of India, Asia, or Siberia, where tigers are native. They instead made their attempt to make them 'wild tigers' in Africa.

Before talking about the rammifications of such an undertaking, it it prudent to mention that reintroducing animals to the wild has been done before. It is done regularly with avian species, as well as insects, fowl, and hooved creatures. The tale of 'Born Free' is a sterling example where two researchers raised Elsa the lion cub up and taught her how to be wild again. It is a daunting task by any measure. These cats are a clean slate--introduced to an environment that they have never seen and interacted with. They must learn to hunt, to kill, to eat, and perhaps most importantly to survive on their own. It is a challenge fraught with danger--as the African plains is home to a harsh land requiring harsh adaptations from its residents.

I have been studying big cats for over eight years, first starting with lions before moving onto tigers. I have spent the last year and a few months observing and working hands on with the cats when time and opportunity allow. Tigers are, in my experience, creatures that hold a vital capacity greater than anything one can imagine. Beyond strength, speed, and instinct, they are also balls of emotion wrapped in striped skin--capable of intelligence that has to be seen to be believed. If any cat were to have a chance to survive in such a situation, then it would certainly be the tiger.

But that does not negate the severe and unpredictable consequences of introducing a non-native species to a land where they do not belong. The creators of this documentary make the argument that by 2010, wild tigers will be extinct in the wild. This grim fact could very well be true, given census numbers, poaching, and the dangers for tigers in the wilds of their native lands. A great deal of conservation effort is going toward keeping the tigers among us, living wild strong and free. To place the tiger in Africa, even in spite of the controls that they are attempting to impose, is an exercise in eco-morphing that can result in severe and unforeseen consequences that could cause irreversible damage not only to those tigers, but to the terrain as well.

One merely needs to look to the state of Florida as a microcosm of what happens when alien species are introduced into a carefully designed eco-system. Exogenous plants have run wild with nothing to control them, choking out all life without consequence and resulting in the death of lake ecosystems. Alien insects have devastated crops in the past, requiring more insecticides and potential hazards for humans down the road. In these cases, it was often a pet insect that got loose and managed to survive the foreign terrain, or an illegally imported plant innocently in a garden that managed to spread outside its confines. But what both situations clearly illustrate is that man does not have the expertise, nor the knowledge to alter the careful balance that mother nature has evolved over the course of thousands of years.

Now, you may be saying that these examples are irrelevant. How do tigers compare to plants and insects? After all, tigers are apex predators, existing at the top of the food chain without the threat of predation outside humans. It's still a closed environment--and since other creatures won't be able to get in or out (in theory), then there should be no long-reaching effects on the ecology of South Africa.

This all ties back into two things: the nature of chaos and the rationale behind this endeavor. These two individuals believe that wild tigers will be extinct by the year 2010. Therefore, their solution is to create a 'wild zone' where tigers can be wild in a separate section of the world, away from the problems of their homelands, where eventually they can be relocated back once the problems there are solved. This concept might work except that it seems to neglect the fact that these creatures are making themselves a home. To give them this land and these skills, and then take them away to another place is every bit as cruel than the forced relocation of a person. It is unfair to those cubs born in that area, and it would be unfair for those adults who have worked so hard to survive there. Furthermore, this area has enclosed electric fences surrounding it, and the desire of its owners to open it to the public. What they have done is not reintroduce tigers to the wild, they have created a theme park based around the concept of a big cat doing what a big cat does. These cats are only as wild as their borders and the herdstock that is shipped in to populate the area. People will still eventually wander about in their range rovers, using binoculars and sipping on champagne as they watch these tigers hunt on the African plain.

This is not a solution.

Tigers will not be extinct in 2010, as the makers of this documentary seem to think. There are thousands of tigers in captivity--a dire situation, but one that clearly dictates that tigers will be with us for some time. The wild tigers may be at a disadvantage and may indeed be gone by 2010, but those same instincts and strengths that made wild tigers survive as long as they have exist in the captive tigers. I have walked next to tigers in captivity and known from the way they look at you that they are killers, and that they still know how to kill. It would take tens of thousands of years of careful breeding to get that trait out of them. These cats are survivors, and they can learn to survive in the wild.

To the credit of these men, they did break ground in their attempt. The lessons they learned in acclimating these tigers to Africa will have a great deal of bearing on how such tigers are acclimated to the places where they belong in the future. But wild tigers in Africa is not the answer. It especially is not the answer since tremendous funds will have to be diverted to maintain the theme park these two have started as opposed to other conservation efforts and private sanctuaries. A 12 foot electric fence that is solar powered is only as good as the sun is out. How long until they are in need of generators? What is to stop the ravaging forces of African nature from destroying these solar panels and rendering entire sections vulnerable? There are worst case scenario kinds of situations here that can result in dire consequences in the form of lost lives...both tiger and perhaps human.

Most disturbing of all are the ethical dilemmas that this project. What is to stop someone from deciding that a rare creature needs another home and attempting to make 'mini ecologies' for other creatures? Why not transplant kangaroos to Arizona, or rare whales to other seas? History has already shown us that humans have a poor track record when it comes to controlling nature. We must place our efforts into fixing the problems that we have started as a species--not relocating other species as a means of compensating for our political shortcomings.