Back to tigers

We are grateful to Chief Bola Abimbola of the House of Adimula in Nigeria for the sponsorship of the tigers, and for organising through his friend, the late James Lang, so many firms and businesses to help with the construction of the tiger's building and enclosure. [ Click Here for details ].

We all know that the tiger is endangered and numbers in the wild are declining. The reasons for this vary, but one of the most understandable is that tigers are extremely dangerous. As human populations increase, pressure on space increases, so the remaining sanctuaries for tigers are squeezed; animals are killed or poached, and the downward spiral continues.

The situation is very different in zoos; tiger numbers here are on the increase. The zoo population of Siberian tigers, for example, is three times the size of the surviving wild population. Pure-bred tigers of a particular sub-species, although located in different zoos across the country, are managed by a Conservation Co- ordinator. The Co-ordinator tries to maintain maximum genetic diversity in the captive population by ensuring equal representation of all the different family lines; therefore advises on which tigers are to be mated.

The spectacular white tigers come originally from Rewa Province in India, where they have cropped up now and again for centuries. In captivity, white tigers are included, along with their more typically coloured brothers and sisters, in the conservation studbook for the Indian Tiger when known to be of pure-bred origin.

If an animal is not pure-bred, it cannot be included in a studbook; the tigers at Glasgow ZooPark from the American captive-bred strain are known to include Siberian as well as Indian tiger blood. Some conservationists feel that tiger "spaces" in zoos should only be occupied by stud-book tigers contributing to the overall captive-breeding conservation effort. This argument must certainly be taken very seriously. There may come a time when our beautiful animals will have to leave.