cross-country, and foraging with hand tools. The same is true of tigers:
once they have been habituated to zoo conditions, there is no going back.
To date, there has been no case of a captive tiger being successfully
introduced, or reintroduced, to the wild. Captivity is a one-way trip.
There is a poignant irony in this because, at one time or another, all of us
have been in the tiger’s situation. The majority of us live how and where
we do because, at some point in the recent past, we were forced out of our
former habitats and ways of living by more aggressive, if not better
adapted, humans. Worth asking here is: Where does this trend ultimately
lead? Is there a better way to honor the fact that we survived?
From a distance, saving wild tigers is an appealing idea, but for many of
the people who live alongside them, these animals might as well be
members of an enemy tribe. Powerful, frightening, and unpredictable,
tigers often represent competition in the quest to meet basic needs,
whether it is for timber, game, farmland, or simply peace of mind. What
exactly do you say to the cell phone-wielding, Toyota-driving dacha
owner when she complains that tigers—tigers!—have eaten all her dogs,
and now she’s afraid to walk in the same woods where she used to pick
mushrooms with her grandmother? What do you say to the farmer whose
cow has just been killed, or to the hunter who believes tigers are scaring
away all the game? These are some of the conversations people are
having in Primorye in the post-perestroika age—along with why a local
masseur is considered a serious candidate for mayor of Vladivostok,
when the former mayor will be caught and sent to prison, why bread costs
twice as much as it did last year, and how it seems like the Chinese are
the only ones willing to work a farm anymore. This is the environment
that people concerned about the future of the Amur tiger must work in.
Meanwhile, across the border in Harbin, the second largest city in
Manchuria, one could find—just months before the 2008 Summer
Olympics—Tibetan street vendors openly selling the paws and penises of