The Bengal tiger is one of the most ferocious hunters in the world. Many a time has there been tales of a single tiger terrorising entire villages, decimating livestock and devouring children. The tiger can take down a leopard or a crocodile, and can injure or even kill a full-grown elephant. Surely, surely nothing can defeat this mighty striped King of the jungle. Nothing, except until now.
The Bengal tiger is now quavering at the hands of the humans. With their supremely advanced technology, with the power to fire projectiles fifty times faster than the speed of a running tiger, the humans have taken over the animal kingdom and are steadily driving the Bengal tiger to extinction.
The major way in which Man is extinguishing the Bengal tiger is by poaching. The demand for tiger parts has been and still is increasing. However, whether or not poaching is immoral can still be questioned. After all, chickens are killed worldwide and their parts exported to many different countries! The morality of poaching has be taken from the viewpoints of the poachers, the people who place orders for tiger parts, and of course, the Bengal tiger itself.
The poachers would certainly agree with the idea that poaching tigers should be allowed. Poaching is worth a lot of money. This comes about because tigers are difficult to catch, and as such, their parts are very precious. The parts then have to be exported to other countries and this will require illegal smuggling and carefully calculated moves. All this adds up to the cost of the tiger parts and consequently makes poaching very profitable.
Poaching is just like hunting, say the poachers, and while others kill deer for their meat we kill tigers for their parts. Tigers are no more than money-bags than deer are food.
Furthermore, many people in other countries, notably China, believe that tiger parts have medicinal properties. Tiger parts, such as the teeth and the claws, have healing properties and may even be used as aphrodisiacs. These people believe in traditional medicine and are willing to pay a lot of money so that they can obtain this precious medicine. They believe that killing tigers will heal people, and this will help them and their families to become well and to prosper. This drives the poaching industry to continue its trade.
However, no one, or nothing, can truly argue for or against poaching, other than the Bengal tiger itself Although the tiger is incable of human speech, many activists have stood up to stand for its rights, including the Indian government. The Bengal tiger is on the verge of extinction, having decreased in number from 40, 000 to 1,300 in a span of 100 years. In addition, global warming threatens the natural environment of these tigers, making it more and more difficult for them to survive, much more when poachers are lurking around in the forest.
The Bengal tiger is an animal which is beng wiped out. We cannot allow it to die out just because of a handful of mindless killing hunters who feel that profit is everything. As for those who believe in the medicinal properties of tigers, there are so many natural herbs and plants which also have similar characteristics. The tiger is living being like us, and deserves to live, and the right to live outweighs all other arguments that may be used to support the act of poaching.
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