• bet365娱乐, bet365体育赛事, bet365投注入口, bet365亚洲, bet365在线登录, bet365专家推荐, bet365开户

    WIRED
    Search
    Search

    Why Captive Tigers Can’t Be Reintroduced to the Wild

    Netflix's "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" has opened up the world's eyes to big cat ownership in America. Outside all the headlines-generating drama, the documentary casts some light onto the big cat black market. Dr. John Goodrich, Chief Scientist and Tiger Program Director for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, sits down with WIRED to talk about these concerns. Can these captive animals ever be reintroduced into the wild?

    Released on 04/13/2020

    Transcript

    [John] These tigers that they're producing

    are worthless to the wild.

    They're not genetically fit, they're not behaviorally fit

    to be reintroduced to the wild.

    [Matt] Netflix's The Tiger King:

    Murder, Mayhem and Madness gives viewers a look

    into the world of big cat ownership in America,

    along with murder plots and unironic leather fringe.

    But in the drama, it's easy to lose sight

    of what's actually happening.

    Big cats being bred, sold, and treated

    as if they were everyday pets.

    And these captive-bred animals will never be released.

    They're no more useful to tigers in the wild

    than domestic dogs are to wolves in the wild.

    To find out what captive breeding

    does to these endangered and threatened animals,

    we talked to Dr. John Goodrich, a chief scientist

    at Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization.

    Before we get into the problems of captive breeding,

    we hear the figure a lot that there are

    more tigers in captivity in the United States

    than there are actually living in the wild.

    I was wondering if there's any truth in it.

    How hard is it to quantify actually

    how many tigers are here, given that this is a black market?

    You hear the number five to 10,000 tigers

    in captivity in the United States.

    Nobody really knows, but it's probably

    in the right order of magnitude,

    'cause there's only about 4,000 tigers left in the wild.

    But, the problem is there's no tracking of these tigers.

    Every single tiger should be identified and tracked

    from its birth to its death.

    It's not a hard thing to do.

    Tigers are walking barcodes.

    Each one is identified individually by their stripes.

    It's like a fingerprint.

    And one of the arguments that these captive breeders make

    is that, you know, if we're having populations crash

    in the wild, why not breed them in captivity

    and reintroduce them?

    Why is that wrong-headed?

    There's two things that happen

    with these captive-bred tigers, and they're opposites.

    One is inbreeding, low genetic diversity,

    and that's primarily in white tigers.

    All white tigers in captivity come from

    a single white tiger captured in India decades ago.

    So, you can imagine those tigers are very inbred.

    But then the opposite happens,

    where there's interbreeding among subspecies of tigers,

    and they even hybridize tigers with lions and other species.

    So, that makes these sort of genetic mutts

    that are not of any use whatsoever in conservation.

    There are a number of different

    extant sub-species of tigers in the wild.

    There's the Siberian tiger up in Russia and Northern China,

    Indochinese tiger in Thailand,

    Malay tiger in Malasia, Sumatran tiger in Indonesia,

    and then the Bengal tiger in South Asia.

    They have different adaptations

    to their unique environments.

    So, you wouldn't wanna take a Siberian tiger, for example,

    and reintroduce it, you know, from the colds of Russia

    to hot tropics of India or Sumatra.

    Likewise, you wouldn't wanna take

    a tiger that's either been severely inbred from captivity,

    or outbred, some of these hybrids,

    and reintroduce it and pollute the genetics

    of the existing wild populations.

    Beyond the genetics, why would it be so problematic

    to reintroduce a tiger raised in captivity into the wild,

    just based on the behaviors that it had developed

    as it has grown up.

    Especially some of these tigers from petting zoos,

    or even some of the rescue centers,

    they have an awful lot of exposure to people.

    People are coming by, visiting them every day,

    people are feeding them every day,

    and they learn to associate people with food,

    and they associate people with play and all sorts of things.

    So, if you were to release one of those tigers

    into the wild, in India, for example,

    where you might have hundreds of people per square mile

    surrounding the national park or tiger reserve

    where you've released them, you can imagine,

    those tigers are just gonna go right to people

    looking for food, looking for entertainment, whatever.

    And then you'd have a big problem on your hands.

    So, people and tigers don't mix well.

    Tigers are too big and too dangerous.

    Are conservation groups breeding tigers

    in a certain way such that they can be reintroduced

    to the wild and not corrupt the gene pool?

    Zoos that are accredited by AZA,

    the Association for Zoos and Aquariums, in North America,

    are required to be part of what they call

    the Species Survival Program.

    So, any tigers in those zoos are bred very carefully

    to maintain their genetics,

    to maintain their subspecies status,

    but also to guard against inbreeding.

    Theoretically, we could take tigers from zoos,

    build a captive breeding center,

    and then start to breed tigers so that cubs were produced

    that were exposed to their natural wild habitat,

    exposed to natural prey, and hopefully

    could eventually be reintroduced into the wild.

    But we usually don't wanna get there.

    You know, that's the absolute last-ditch effort,

    where if it comes to reintroductions,

    it's a bit of a Hail Mary.

    How does a program at a zoo that is maintaining tigers

    different from what we're seeing

    in a show like Tiger King?

    First, zoos are not breeding tigers for sale.

    They are breeding tigers to maintain

    that genetic stock in captivity.

    These petting zoos are breeding tigers to make money.

    So, they're trying to pump out as many cubs as they can,

    remember, the cubs are only worth anything to them

    in the petting zoo until they're about four months old,

    and then they become too dangerous

    for the public to handle.

    What happens to all those tigers?

    We don't know.

    That's a big concern.

    Tigers breed really well in captivity.

    So, it's easy for people to take them, breed them,

    produce more tigers, and everybody wants

    that selfie with a tiger cub.

    So, that compounds the problem,

    but you can imagine this animal, you know,

    in the wild, tigers need anywhere

    from 10 to hundreds of square miles

    that they cover over the course of the year,

    their home range, and you can imagine an animal

    that should be wandering over that kind of area

    in lush forests being kept in a small cage,

    they don't do too well.

    You know, so one of the things the accredited zoos do,

    beyond trying to having natural habitat

    and large enough enclosures, they do an awful lot

    of enrichment where they're putting

    different scents around the cage every day,

    giving the animals different toys to play with,

    different things to explore, so the animals

    are constantly stimulated in ways they might

    be stimulated in their natural habitat.

    Can you walk us through what conservation

    actually looks like out in the wild?

    All tigers need is lots of inviolate space

    with good habitat, high prey densities,

    and to be left alone by people, and they thrive.

    Tigers are most threatened by habitat loss,

    and especially poaching.

    Tigers are poached because they're extremely valuable

    on the traditional medicine market.

    So, while the recipe for tiger conservation is simple,

    actually implementing it can be pretty challenging.

    Tigers live in some of the most remote,

    rugged, and difficult parts of the world to access,

    so the patrol teams that are out there

    trying to protect tigers from poaching

    have a really tough job ahead of them,

    in just finding the poachers,

    capturing the poachers, and then, once captured,

    you might be a week's walk into a forest,

    you've gotta take them back out.

    So, it's a pretty challenging task.

    And what about legal protections here

    for tigers in the United States?

    So, tigers are on the United States

    Endangered Species Act, and that gives them

    a certain amount of protection,

    but what that means is they can't be traded internationally,

    and they can't be traded across state borders.

    At the state level, many states have laws

    against owning big cats and other wildlife species,

    but many states allow it openly.

    So, there is legislation being pushed right now

    to make it illegal for private ownership of big cats

    in the United States.

    You know, well, what could we do with those tigers?

    Do we put them in better homes in the United States?

    Are there enough of those, given that

    this black market is so big?

    Would it be able to hold all of them?

    It's a really tough problem.

    If we were to pass legislation today

    that banned ownership of tigers,

    there's a number of different ways it could go.

    You could start a phase-out period,

    where maybe first these places are all required

    to spay and neuter their animals,

    and then when their last animal finally dies,

    they close down.

    If we were to just close it down

    and try to find homes for all those tigers,

    where are you gonna put them?

    You know, there's a lot of rescue centers

    around the country, most of those are at capacity already,

    so the next choice would be to euthanize them

    in the way we do with an awful lot

    of our surplus dogs and cats,

    and that of course would be tragic,

    but the cost of maintaining these tigers

    is also exorbitant.

    And, you know, for the million dollars it costs

    per year to run a rescue center,

    we could protect so many tigers in the wild.

    So, there's trade-offs too.

    It's a real moral dilemma.

    Do you have any advice for as to

    how people can be smarter about finding good parks?

    It's pretty simple, actually.

    You can just look for zoos that are accredited by the AZA,

    and the AZA has them listed on their website.

    If it's not on the list,

    doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad zoo,

    but then you'll need to dig deeper.

    I mean, if you get to take selfies with a tiger,

    if you get to touch them, then no.

    That's not a great establishment.

    I was wondering if you had any insights

    as to how you might be able to tell

    if a tiger has been mistreated in captivity.

    Some obvious physical signs might be

    a tiger that's extremely thin or extremely fat,

    or maybe shows some evidence of injuries.

    But beyond that, you can learn a lot from their behavior.

    If a tiger looks peaceful and content,

    it's probably peaceful and content.

    If it's pacing around its cage

    and showing other kinds of neurotic behaviors,

    then it's probably in too small of a cage,

    it's not receiving enough stimulus.

    We are gonna know the answer to this question,

    but would a tiger ever make a good pet?

    Absolutely not.

    Think about having a 400-pound cat with three-inch canines

    and three-inch claws in your living room

    or in your backyard, and even a well-mannered,

    completely non-aggressive individual,

    obviously an animal that big with that kind of weaponry

    could hurt you without even trying to.

    [tiger roars]

    Up Next
    bet365娱乐