assumption that they had been granted dominion over the land—just as
God had granted it to Noah, the original homesteader:
1: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
2: And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast
of the earth.Implicit in these lines from Genesis 9 is the belief that there is no room
for two on the forest throne. And yet, in a different context, these words
could apply as easily to tigers as they do to humans. In so many words,
God puts the earth and all its creatures at their disposal:
3: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the
green herb have I given you all things.In 1857, when Primorye was still technically Chinese territory, the
governor of East Siberia (who was the czar’s, and therefore heaven’s,
agent in the Far East) said much the same thing to a crowd of outbound
settlers: “God be with you, children!^12 You are free now. Work the land,
make it Russian, and start a new life.” The Yankovskys, like so many
other pioneers, took these words to heart and applied them to the forests
of Primorye. This was unfortunate, because the tigers had already
claimed these gifts for themselves. It is only in the past two hundred
years—out of two million—that humans have seriously contested the
tiger’s claim to the forest and all it contains. As adaptable as tigers are,
they have not evolved to accommodate this latest change in their
environment, and this lack of flexibility, when combined with armed,
entitled humans and domestic animals, is a recipe for disaster.
This may well be what got Markov into trouble. It is safe to say that had
he not been carrying a firearm, he would still be alive. And had he not