The Case for Keeping Wild Tigers

CONSERVATIONISTS PREDICT THAT MEMBERS OF ONE OF EARTH’S most magnificent species, India’s Bengal tiger, may disappear completely from the wild within five years. The tiger is high on the food chain, so its disappearance would not be as ecologically disruptive as the loss of insects or fungi, for example. Furthermore, tigers require a lot of space to move in search of prey and mates, therefore conflicting with growing human populations and demands. So one may wonder what it matters if one more species, especially a large carnivore that has long been feared as a “maneater,” disappears.

If the tiger goes from the wild, we will suffer spiritually. The tiger is part of the rich mythology and folklore of humankind, a symbol of our love-fear relationship with nature. Its beauty, size, ferocity, and power inspire awe and terror simultaneously, reminding us of our own frailty and vulnerability. Like the beluga, marbled murrelet, and spotted owl, the tiger is an “indicator” species whose fate will tell us whether we are capable of sharing the planet with others.

In preparing programs on wildlife, I am constantly shocked at the speed and scale of loss. Years ago, I stood in the Delta Marsh south of Lake Winnipeg during the fall migration of waterfowl. The sky was filled with a cacophony of calls and dozens of chevrons of geese at one time. It was thrilling to know that wild creatures still act out their genetic destiny as they have for millennia.

But those waterfowl migrating up the central North American flyway were a mere vestige of the past. A century ago, I was told, the birds literally filled the sky from horizon to horizon on their great flights along the continent. I was also amazed to learn that grizzly bears were not always confined to West Coast mountains—they once populated foothills and prairie grasslands all the way to Ontario and down to Texas and California. They were prairie animals living on the great herds of bison, which were also exterminated.

Elders who have lived their entire lives along the East and West Coasts, across the Prairies, or above the Arctic Circle recount depressingly parallel stories of decline in abundance and variety of living things. Their memories encompass a sweep of time that is often lost as time shrinks and the pace of life speeds up.

Farley Mowat’s classic book Sea of Slaughter is a lament for the decimation of walruses, whales, and seabirds, and the confinement of the survivors to a fraction of their former range. Mowat’s book anticipated the collapse of the northern cod, which has been catastrophic for Newfoundlanders.

In cities, gleaming displays of vegetables, fruit, and meat in supermarkets create an illusion that the Earth’s abundance is endless. It’s easy for urban dwellers to believe this fantasy of a world without limits when we are immersed in a human-created landscape and few of us get to experience seasonal rites of nature anymore. But because our reference point is the urban setting and what we experience, we don’t see the impoverishment of nature over the past two centuries.

Imagine what uplifting opportunities we have lost. It boggles the mind to think of the sight of tens of millions of bison moving across the Prairies. The plant intake and fecal output of those giant herbivores created the prairie grasslands, supporting the countless plants, insects, fungi, and birds that evolved along with them.

And passenger pigeons! Eyewitness accounts tell of day after day of darkness as billions of birds flew by. It is said that forests rang with the cracking of branches collapsing under the weight of the resting birds. Night hunters, who slaughtered them to ship to Europe, slithered on guano-coated forest floors. The elimination of passenger pigeons in a mere blink of evolutionary time must have had catastrophic ecological reverberations.

In our total preoccupation with exploitation and consumption, we have become impoverished spiritually. The ultimate source of our solace, inspiration, companionship, and sense of place has always been nature. As we tear at the web of living things of which we are a part, we not only threaten our own biophysical needs, but also eliminate our evolutionary relatives and fellow Earth beings. We live in a terribly degraded and empty world in which the companionship of our evolutionary kin is replaced by clever toys from the industrial juggernaut to keep us distracted.

The fact that my grandchildren will grow up in a world in which tigers exist only in zoos, books, and videos pains my soul.