Mitra writes: “There are perhaps 1.5 billion head of cattle and buffalo and 2 billion goats and sheep in the world today. These are among the most exploited of animals, yet they are not in danger of dying out; there is incentive, in these instances, for humans to conserve.”

Is the idea to domesticate the tiger, or why else cite examples of cattle or buffalo? Besides, conservation is not about saving the tiger from going extinct. Chinese farms and US ranches apart, zoos round the world have enough tigers today to save specimens for generations to come. The idea is to save the tiger in the wild so that with it flourishing at the top of the food chain, everything down the pyramid flourishes. If the pyramid is alive, so will be the forests that shelter it and the water systems that are sustained by such forests. Conservation, Mitra fails to understand, is not about having thousands of tigers strutting about in cages lined up in some manicured ranch.

Mitra, however, offers a vague prescription: “The tiger breeds easily, even in captivity. Given a free hand, China could produce 100,000 tigers in the next 10 to 15 years. With the development of reintroduction techniques, it might be possible to return the tiger to some of its remaining natural habitats.”

Till date, reintroduction of captive-bred tigers to the wild never succeeded. Repeated efforts in India, including those by famed Billy Arjan Singh of Dhudwa, have backfired for several reasons: Such tigers lack the wild instinct and skills and usually turn man-eaters (being captive-bred they don’t consider humans alien) etc etc. Even the Chinese plan to reintroduce tigers bred in a South African zoo has not taken off. Clearly, it is at best wishful at this point to claim that farm tigers can replenish the wild stock.

... contd.