Word: tigers
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...tiger's power, it can be an easy animal to kill. Many cats in the Ranthambhore park have died from poison that villagers sprinkled on animals that the tigers had killed and temporarily left on the ground. Other cats have fallen victim to the hunters of the Mogiya tribes, who pack high- powered rifles and shotguns. Middlemen pay them $100 to $300 per animal (a huge amount in an area where an average wage...
Indian conservationists have watched with dismay as this new round of poaching unravels the work of decades. Sanjoy Debroy, a career wildlife officer, says that when he revisits a tiger reserve in Assam that he directed for a dozen years, the demoralized staff members can't talk to him without weeping. Their tigers are hunted by members of the Boro tribe, who are staging a rebellion against the government. They trade tiger parts for guns and ammunition to carry on their insurgency. The park had an estimated 90 tigers, but Debroy has heard that between 30 and 40 were killed...
...situation is in India, it is far worse in eastern Russia's taiga. The Amur tiger that inhabits this 800-mile-long stretch of evergreen forest nearly disappeared once before -- during the 1930s, when communist big shots would bag eight or 10 of the cats during a single hunt. But the state exercised iron control over the region, and when it decided to protect the tigers, their population recovered from roughly 30 to as many as 400 during the mid-1980s. Unfortunately for the Amur, tiger-bone prices began surging in the early 1990s, just when the fall...
...subsequent economic chaos has left the local wildlife departments broke and officials susceptible to bribes. Amid this collapse of enforcement, "the poacher owns the taiga," says Steven Galster, who monitors conservation efforts from Vladivostok for Britain's Tiger Trust. Not content with staking out areas frequented by the cats, some hunters stalk the Amur tiger on horseback with the help of dogs...
...losses have been staggering. Last winter, Russian officials estimated that between 80 and 96 tigers were killed, and the poaching continues unabated this year. A new study of tiger-population dynamics led by biologist John Kenney of the University of Minnesota suggests that even moderate poaching makes extinction a virtual certainty once a tiger census drops below 120. Unless the Russian government controls hunting, the Amur tiger will cross that threshold within two or three years...