Tigers Aren't Burning Bright Anymore

A Kadir Jasin

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THIS Chinese new year, is not my year. According to Chinese almanac, I was born in the year of the pig. I have no problem with that. Pigs are thriving – swine flu no swine flu.

In the UK, the army used pigs in their blast experiments. When the pig huggers complained, they said better to use pigs (than humans).

This year, according to Chinese almanac, is the year of the tiger. Those born during the year of the tiger have something to look forward to. The economy, they say, is recovering. We can all yam seng to that – not necessarily with Tiger beer. Coco-cola will do.

Alas there’s little for the real tigers to look forward too. They are being hunted and eaten to the brink of extinction.

According to the Discovery Channel, fewer than 50 wild tigers remain in China (where the most number of people are welcoming the year of the tiger).

A conservation group in the Middle Kingdom had voiced the hope that the year of the tiger would not be the last for the endangered big cats there.

Xie Yan, director of the China program for the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), said that just 20 years ago tigers still roamed across large swathes of China.

As China booms, is seems, the tigers are doomed.

Based on data from the year 2000, there are only around 15 Bengal tigers left in Tibet, 10 Indo-Chinese tiger in China's southwest, and around 20 Siberian tigers in the northeast.

A Reuters report from The Hague quoted a UN expert as saying that genetic experts had found evidence a restaurant in China served tiger meat in defiance of a 1993 ban.

John Sellar, the senior enforcement officer for the Conference on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), said the tiger farm he visited in China "vehemently denied" serving tiger’s in a restaurant linked to it.

But evidence compiled after he visited the Guangxi Xiongsen Bear & Tiger Garden this year backed up a report by Britain's ITN television that the restaurant had tiger on the menu, he told a CITES meeting.

Sellar sent a copy of a genetic laboratory report made on a sample of meat obtained by ITN to experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who confirmed the study was properly carried out and the results matched tiger DNA.

In our beloved (but not anymore happy) Malaysia, we will still be greeting our Chinese countrymen (and women) a happy new year of the tiger although only an estimated 500 tigers are left in the wild.

The rest had been shot and eaten. A few were destroyed because they attacked people and livestock.

The New Straits Times some years ago reported that (Chinese) restaurants in Johor had been found to be serving tiger meat to attract customers from neighbouring Singapore.

Tigers had been extinct from Lion City since 1902. According the lore, the last wild tiger was shot when it roamed into the Raffles Hotel (where the White hunters were billeted) on Aug. 13, 1902.

The NST report said the Singaporeans were willingly to pay as much as RM1,000 for a kg of tiger meat to satisfy their palate and supposedly boost their libido.

The Malaysian Nature Society Johor branch adviser Vincent Chow was quoted by the paper as saying that tiger meat could fetch as much as RM1,000 per kg, depending on whether the meat was sold cooked or fresh, while the going rate for tiger’s bones was RM600 per kg.

What is RM1,000 to Singaporeans for tiger meat and bear’s bile if they can improve their mojo? A Durex – yes the condom maker – 2008 global survey found that Singaporeans made love on average 62 times a year against the world’s average of 127.

Now Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew knows why he has to depend on imported Chinese and other immigrants to boost his country’s birth rate and its population.

But there aren’t enough tigers to help Singaporeans spice up their love life. The WWF estimates that there could be as few as 3,2000 tigers left in the wild worldwide. Save the tigers, take the Viagra!

In 2008, Malaysia embarked on the ambitious National Tiger Action Plan with the hope of doubling tiger population to 1,000 in 2020. But so far we have heard of wild tigers being shot but not the proof that tiger cubs are being born in the wild.

For reasons best known to the WWF, the world wildlife conservation fund, has declared 2010 The Year of The Tigers.

Its website said: “On February 14, 2010, the Chinese lunar calendar rolls into the Year of the Tiger. Unfortunately, the plight of wild tigers doesn’t call for much celebration. Three subspecies have been driven to extinction in the past century alone and experts estimate there are as few as 3,200 tigers left in the wild. The good news is that together we can secure a future for these magnificent big cats. Join WWF to reach Tx2, our goal to double the number of wild tigers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.”

So, to all and sundry, the scribe say, gong xi fa chai, be safe and be happy. Hopefully the year of the tiger brings happiness and vigour (especially to the economy).

Of the magnificent cat, Willian Blake wrote:

TIGER, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?



In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thy eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?



And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?



And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?



What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?



When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?



Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?