Tiger Farms Should Be Closed

The International Day of the Tiger is July 29, but there are still thousands of tigers living in captivity. The World Wildlife Fund has estimated there are about 8,000 living on farms, with only 3,900 living in the wild.

800px-Panthera_tigris_corbetti_(Tierpark_Berlin)_832-714-(118)Countries like Laos, Vietnam, China and Thailand may have about 200 tiger farms, and some of them have been linked with the illegal trade in tiger parts.

Some people are very misguided in their beliefs that tiger body parts have some sort of ‘medicinal’ value, though science has never proven this to be true. The results of the inaccurate beliefs are horrendous, “The so-called “Temple of Tigers” in western Thailand was closed in May after Thai wildlife officials discovered dozens of dead cubs inside a freezer.”

People who buy these phony ‘medicines’ are wasting their money and time taking them, because they don’t work. Sick people can spend their money on real medications that have a much better chance of helping to treat or relieve their health problems.

Some of the tigers living in captivity are not kept for their body parts, but are living in conditions more like those animals experience at zoos. The tiger farms should not all be shut down at once, or the tigers would suffer because some of them have adapted to living there and not in wild lands.

Adults who grew up from birth in captivity would not know how to survive. There would need to have some sort of reasonable plan put in place for tiger captivity releases, to ensure the tigers would remain healthy and be able to survive.

Some of those in captivity might not be healthy, due to neglect or disease. Before a tiger farm closure plan is formulated, an assessment of all the captive tigers many need to be conducted and completed.

What drives the animal cruelty and abuse is greed, “The illegal wildlife trade is linked to the same transnational criminal networks that run gun, drug, and human-trafficking operations, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which estimates that this global business generates $19 billion dollars a year.”

Image Credit: LotseCC BY-SA 3.0

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