Save the tigers or let them die

I read somewhere that it was the year 1411 AD when Ahmedabad was founded by Sultan Ahmed Shah. Then around a month ago, I found another significance fact about this figure when all the news channels started flashing the menacing news that there were only 1,411 tigers left in India. And now every individual is being urged these days to do their bit in saving the life of tigers in India, in fact on earth. Be it school, college, government agencies or India Inc, overnight, ‘Save The Tigers’ campaign gave their social responsibility drive a twist. Saving the tiger became an issue of national pride suddenly.

Major reason behind the killings of tigers is probably each tiger fetches Rs. 2 crore in international market as everything from the cat’s bones to the teeth has a value. I agree that killings should be immediately stopped and Wildlife Act 1972 should be amended in a manner to include stricter punishments for poachers and this law should be vehemently implemented. But apart from spending crores of rupees on Save Tiger Project advertisement, our government should also work at the grass root level to improve the lives of tribal people who are tempted by external agents to kill tigers for a few hundreds bucks.

Project Tiger sometimes call the tiger an indicator of our ecosystem’s health. I am not very much convinced with the idea because there are many more animals that are the part of our ecosystem and ecosystem cannot lose balance if specie, 1411 in numbers, extinct. I feel that evolution is an ongoing process, and in this process many new species are formed and the others extinct. If not, we would have seen real Dinosaurs and Mammoths in the animated movies like Jurasssic Park and 10,000 BC respectively. Probably we would not have been here to see such movies if Dinosaurs still existed. Those species exited and paved way to new species like human beings otherwise could you imagine your existence with Dinosaurs, Mammoth and Archaeopteryx. If global warming, population and pollution continue to grow like this, we might also have to face the fear of extinction some day. We all have to admit that neither of the above mentioned things can be stopped completely, but we can slow down their pace and this way we can only prolong our survival. Later on someday we will go and some other specie would occupy the space vacated by us as nature is clever enough to find something to adapt to the changing environment. Every day millions of species are losing out which we have no account for. For now, it might be Tiger’s turn.

I repeat that I am against the killings of not only tigers but any other animal in the wild and it should be stopped immediately. But the way awareness is being extended for this government initiative, I never saw for any other thing in past. There are stern national issues like poverty, unemployment, child and adult education, but government of India never asked us to write blogs on those issues as it is being asked for Save The Tiger Project. Are we only and so much concerned about tigers because since time immemorial, this mammal has been considered royal and it is our national animal? Would saving life of 1,411 tigers improve the day to day life of a common man? If saving a tiger cost millions going into advertisement and generating awareness, I would rather be happy to let Tigers die and utilizing that money on other socio-economic issues.