This old postcard breaks my heart. I did not even realize until scanning it to post for OPW that the tiger has her tongue out of her mouth. I had previously focused my attention on her one huge paw hung outside the cage between two bars. I just cannot say anything more about this dignified beauty in a cage. She seems to reach through the decades with a message for this coming Earth Day:
Do not forget us. Do not let my species perish under your watch.
Dominic Righini-brand, Evgeniya Righini-brand & Elena Medvedeva, Russian Federation
WWF Gallery Posters
WWF Gallery Posters
Source for information below: World Wildlife Fund website. Please consider a visit to learn more and to find out how you can help save tigers.
We have lost 97% of our wild tigers this century. With as few as 3,200 remaining, action is needed to increase and strengthen their habitat and protect the species from major threats such as poaching.
WWF works with the 13 tiger countries to create a future for wild tigers.
{Do not forget us.
Do not let my species perish under your watch.}
Current threats to tigers can be separated into two categories:
Poaching and retributive killing
which includes :
- the illegal trade of tiger parts and
- human-tiger conflict
Habitat loss and fragmentation
which includes:
- the results of illegal logging and
- commercial plantations.
Many range countries lack the capacity and resources to properly monitor tiger and prey populations.
Policies conducive to ensuring long-term survival of the tiger are often lacking.
Where they do exist, implementation is often ineffective.
Silvia Becuzzi, Italy
Help the Tiger!
Donate to tigers
Don't buy medicine containing tiger parts
Do buy sustainably produced palm oil (PDF 1.26MB)
More ways to help tigers...
This is clearly an emergency: if nothing is done, tigers will disappear from the wild within the next decade.
The good news is that we can save the tiger.
We know what needs to be done, we know it will work... and what is more, tiger range countries, the World Bank and major NGOs have come together to achieve this!
{Do not forget us. Do not let my species perish under your watch.}
Katarzyna Jackowska, Switzerland
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11 comments:
It would be such a loss....
William Blake. 1757–1827
489. The Tiger
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 5
Burnt the fire of thine 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? 10
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 15
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee? 20
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
The UK is not famous for its great zoos and safari parks - the nearest ones to me were (and still are to an extent) concrete enclosures that must have been extremely depressing for a wild animal. the enclosures have improved a great deal since then.
The caged tiger reminded me of the closest "zoo" which was about half a mile out of the nearest City Centre - the entrance to which was marked by a giant statue (you had to walk between the legs to enter), but it was a pretty poor effort - little more than a petting zoo really
I hope that we can keep wild animals going, but the pressures from poaching and farmers suggests that maybe we cant forever. i hope I'm wrong
:-***(
I don't understand why so few poeple seem to understand that, just because we CAN impose human will on other creatures, that doesn't mean it is right or best to do so.
I love tigers and mourn for them. I also love the song you included. I first heard it sung by Roberta Flack. I think it's one of my favorite songs, ever.
Good post! Something we all need to be aware of, thank you :)
With every species we lose a part of us dies. Too bad I can't post one of my tiger paintings to comments.
Good work here, Lydia.
ah lydia, my heart breaks along side yours. i didn't notice the tongue either until you mentioned it. i was at a zoo in southern california a little bit ago and it was a very good zoo: spacious and well cared for. but....a cage is a cage. to see lions and elephants and giraffes and monkeys and ohmygod eagles for the benefit of many who don't even realize there but for the grace of god....
thank you being you, lydia
♥
kj
mythopolis~ Thank you for posting the poem in your comments. It needed to be here.
Pixies~ Your zoos don't sound very good...but hopefully they, along with many others, will continuously improve the space and animal care.
Your final paragraph broke my heart even further. It all goes back to a need for greater population control, and I do not mean wild animal populations...
Ricardo~ Gracias por su mensaje. He utilizado Google Translate para leerlo - y lo mismo para escribir en respuesta. Le agradezco su visita a mi blog y sus buenos deseos. ¡Feliz Pascua a ti también!
Fireblossom~ I love and mourn them with you. And the song...one of my top ten favorites of all. I will check out Roberta Flack's cover at youtube. After we saw Leonard Cohen in concert last Dec. I could not get enough of his music and spent hours watching various youtube vids of his many songs. When I found this video of his son, Adam Cohen, and Canada's Serena Ryder singing Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye, I found the version (via Ryder's interpretation) that sounds like what I feel in this song. She obviously cannot contain her passion for the song and it soars! (If you like her I suggest checking out her version of The Sisters of Mercy, done that same night in tribute to Leonard Cohen. I'm a fan of her own work now also.)
Looking to the Stars~ Thank you for being here and commenting. Wishing you a happy Easter weekend (hope the bunny brings you lots of chocolate).
susan~ Thanks much. I have an idea. If you have posted any of your tiger paintings at your blog you could put the link here in a comment. I'd be right over to admire them, because I know they would be wonderful, as all your animal/bird paintings are.
kj~ You describe a zoo that is at least trying. The Oregon Zoo in Portland has a big heart and has made many important changes. We haven't been since the baby elephant was introduced to the public maybe three summers ago. I will make a point of seeing the tigers when we next go. But I know it will depress me. I just hope that they can in some way sense it when people send love to them.
It never fails to annoy me, human selfishness. the fact we are capable of such beauty and such monstrosity at the same time is so frustrating. I can't help but think we are on an impossible spiral of downwardness that can't be slowed.. too much power and responsibility has been given to the 'higher powers', you and I, the average joes, there's feck all we can do individually and even collectively, to change things.. we are still a minority compared to the population of the planet, a planet where the majority of human beings are kept downtrodden by either poverty, or abject comfort.. either place is as mind numbing as the other... those of us who actually think about things and try to adjust our behaviour accordingly, well, the effort just gets swallowed up by all the other shite... but hey, ho.. perhaps that is all part of the evolution of man, we must eventually eradicate everything and then ourselves... ?
the watercats~ I love your commentaries, the ones that show your heart and passion...like the one you left here. Thank you.
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