500 People Preserving Big Cats

Today is the Wildcat Walkabout and we are completely SOLD OUT! Just the ticket sales have nearly doubled the money we will be able to give to conservation efforts around the globe, compared to last year’s event.

The World is Finally Getting Serious About Ending Captive Tiger Breeding & Abuse

The new proposal approved this week requires all countries with captive Asian big cats to report to the CITES Secretariat, the treaty’s governing body, on how they are ensuring that big cats and their parts don’t enter the illegal trade. The Secretariat will use those reports to decide if certain facilities should be inspected. After that, the Secretariat will file a report, which could lead to certain countries being required to take specific steps to bring problem facilities in line.

This new requirement can only help, but: “There’s no good news for tigers,” says Kanitha Krishnasamy of TRAFFIC, the organization that monitors wildlife trade. Krishnasamy is the co-author of a new report that found that seizures of tiger products are continuing to increase, as is the percentage of seized products that come from captive-bred tigers—now about 30 percent, up from 2 percent in 2000…

Proponents of tiger farms often argue that they take pressure off wild tiger populations, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
“These facilities have been in existence for a very long time,” TRAFFIC’s Krishnasamy says. “If there was any indication that they led to tigers in the wild not being persecuted, we would have seen it by now. We haven’t. There’s no evidence to show that poaching of tigers in the wild has gone down.”…

“The [CITES] parties have sent a clear and resounding message,” said Banks. “Tiger farms and trade in captive bred tiger parts and derivatives are a threat to wild tiger conservation and enough is enough.”

Get the whole story here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/wildlife-watch-tiger-farms-cites-protections/