No sympathy for tigers victims

The father of a teen who was killed by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo questioned the facility's safety on Thursday, as police reportedly considered whether one of the victims taunted the deadly jungle cat. Sources close to the investigation told the San Francisco Chronicle that police are probing whether one of the Siberian tiger's three victims climbed over a fence Christmas Day and then dangled a leg or other body part over the moat.

Police said Carlos Sousa, 17, of San Jose was killed just outside the tiger's enclosure. The two others, who were injured, were about 300 yards away by a cafe.

Of course the cat is real victim here, the tiger is already locked up in a damn cage, and now has to be shot and killed for of all things being a tiger. Its a wild animal who of course is going to maul and kill what it wants.

It is considered to be the largest of the 6 tiger subspecies.

The Siberian Tiger is critically endangered.

In the early 1900s, it lived throughout the northeastern China, Korean Peninsula, northeastern Mongolia and southeastern Russia. In 1922 they died out from South Korea (then under Japanese rule) and today, it is very rare in North Korea and is largely confined to a very small part of Russia's southern Far East (the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky and Khabarovsky Krai). There are very few tigers in northeastern China and fewer still in North Korea. Captive breeding and conservation programs are currently active.

A count, taken in 1996 reported 430 Siberian Tigers in the wild. However, Russian conservation efforts have led to a slight increase, or at least to a stable population of the subspecies, as the number of individuals in the Siberian Forests was estimated between 431 and 529 in the last count in 2005. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the latest Russian Census reports put this number to be anywhere between 480 and 520 without including the small numbers of this subspecies present in mainland China. The Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding Centre in the northern Heilongjiang province of China plans to release 620 Siberian tigers, after its numbers have increased from 708 to 750.

The captive population of Siberian Tiger comprises several hundred. A majority of these tigers are found in China, with other populations in Europe and North America. The large, distinctive and powerful cats are popular zoo exhibits. The Siberian Tiger is bred within the Species Survival Plan (SSP), a project based on 83 wild caught tigers. According to most experts, this population is large enough to stay stable and genetically healthy. Today, approximately 160 Siberian Tigers participate in the SSP, which makes it the most extensively bred tiger subspecies within the programme. There are currently no more than around 255 tigers in the tiger SSP from three different subspecies. Developed in 1982, the Species Survival Plan for the Siberian Tiger is the longest running program for a tiger subspecies. It has been very fortunate and productive, and the breeding program for the Siberian Tiger has actually been used as a good example when new programs have been designed to save other animal species from extinction.

The Siberian Tiger is not very difficult to breed in captivity, but the possibility of survival for animals bred in captivity released into the wild is small. Conservation efforts that secure the wild population are therefore still imperative. If a captive bred Siberian Tiger were to be released into the wild, it would lack the necessary hunting skills and starve to death. Captive bred tigers can also approach humans and villages, since they have learned to associate humans with feeding and lack the natural shyness of the wild tigers. In a worst-case scenario, the starving tigers could even become man-eaters. Since tigers must be taught how to hunt by their mothers when they are still cubs, a program that aimed to release captive bred Siberian Tigers into the wild would face great difficulties.