Save The Real Tigers!

Did you know that probability of you being struck by lightning in a wildlife sanctuary is more than that of your spotting a tiger there! And that the recent dip in sharemarkets dosen't look so bad when compared to the alarming rate at which Tigers are evaporating in India. Guess, its nothing new and most of us are aware of this travesty, whats strange is that this issue has never really evoked strong reactions from us and nor does this topic ever figure in our daily animated conversations. Slightly strange for a society which suffers from severe verbal diarrhea, and has an opinion on almost every conceivable thing ranging from serious issues such as terrorism, poverty, globalization etc to frivolus ones such as India TV news, Rakhi Sawant and star rivalries. Then, why is it that the tragic state of our national animal escapes our collective conciousness, it's probably due to our lack of awarness on this topic. May be we just dont know or realise how bad things have really become. To emphasise on the severity of the problem, presented below are few statistics I stumbled across recently -

• At the current rate of poaching and habitat loss, it is estimated that tigers in the wild could completely disappear within the next ten years
• Poachers killed 29 tigers, nine out of 16 lions fell to poachers and of the 272 elephants killed since 2005, 72 were killed by poachers. These 29-39 tigers are just the tip of the iceberg. If 29 tigers have been killed by poachers and their carcass found, it means at least 200-250 tigers have been killed by poachers.
• According to the last official census in 2005, India had 1411 tigers in the wild but wildlife experts say the real number could be anything between 800-1000.

We are staring at an imminent extinction of our national animal in next few years time. Damage being done is irreversible, and no stimulus package would be able to bail us out of this crisis. The very fact that the number of paper tigers like me is on the rise and that the real tigers are left to die, says a lot about the civilized, liberal and rational society we all are a part of.

Sorry Tigers, all we can do is offer you our sincere condolences. We would have loved to prevent you from becoming an extinct species, but amidst election season, IPL 2 and global economic slow down, haven't quite got the time to do that. But let me promise you, we wont let you fade away from our memories, we'll watch your footages on the Discovery channel and may even make a movie on the lines of Jurrasic Park. Your precious skin has graced our sofas and the bodies of hot models for years now, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for that. You have also been the prime source of livelihood for poachers, giving those lads a steady source of income. We are rapidly turning your homes into concreate jungles , rendering you folks homeless, and you never seem to complain. Yes, some of you do end up entering our premises and then end up getting brutally killed, but such intermittent stray incidents shouldn't come in way of our friendship. "Yeh dosti hum nahi toren gay, extinct ho jaon tum magar hum poaching nahi chorengay"