There's more captive Tigers in Texas than in the wild...Fact
MIKE

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That is true, I recently read that there are over 10,000 tigers kept privately in captivity in the USA. Thats more than in the wild.

Yes, it will be really sad if they disappear from their natural habital. However, still having the species exist in the world at all through captive breeding has got to be better than having none at all.

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It's a tough one. The truth behind the pretty little shops you see is pretty gruesome much of the time. Regarding the rares - harvesting wilds under licence, monitored by a government, is making use of a natural resource in very poor countries to inject foreign money into the economy. Business in many of these is done differently, as is animal keeping. The west, and the UK in particular has probably the highest standards in the world - which means that go anywhere else and you might get upset.

Taking animals out into private collections, and breeding programs gives a nice, healthy captive gene pool.

Remember too that many of the animals are hated in the native countries. Tigers are feared and killed where possible. Hippos and elephants sometimes too.

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Yeah, you do have to see it from the natives' point of view!!

If they kill a Tiger, for example, they could get about £8,000 which could buy their families food, water, shelter etc. for the next couple of years, plus it gets rid of a potential death threat to them, their family and their livestock.

I'm not saying that what they do is right, because it is very cruel and is destroying the tiger population, but i can see the benefits if i look at it from their perspective.

I think it is inevitable that Tigers will become extinct in the wild, but as long as we keep a nice captive breeding program going then hopefully numbers will rise and they can be released into the wild again.

Hopefully we can do the same for all animals that are endangered.

Anyway back to the original topic...

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I'd heard that captive tigers can't be released into the wild as tigers don't have an instinct to hunt, they learn it. If they're captive no one teaches them to hunt and so they don't know how. I saw a documentory about two guys who released the first two captive bred tigers into the wild, but they taught the tigers to hunt first which was a long winded process!

It was mad though, after handling the tigers for years and taking so much time to train them to hunt they ended up releasing the tigers into a game park in africa, thus causing a big comotion and contraversy over the fact that there shouldn't be wild tigers in africa!

just reaslised this thread is months old... crap.

so? if its kept going then why not. i personally want to breed wolves and leopards if i get a dwa licence in later years.

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