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Under threat of extinction, the world's last tigers

Tigers are also bred in South Africa. In 2015, there were 44 known facilities with at least 280 tigers reared for trade or as game hunts, violating CITES decisions.
The latest tigers in the world are living under severe threat of extinction, having lost 93% of their historical area and having experienced a 95% population decline in the past century. The biggest threat to their survival is poaching, to meet the high demand in Asia for their parts and derivatives.

Lions are also threatened, especially as a result of their bones trade, as legalized last year at the CITES Conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). CITES has decided to allow South Africa to export 800 lion skeletons per year, as long as the lions come from captive plants in South Africa. South African trade also exacerbates the demand for tigers and derivatives of tigers and other felines.
South Africa currently has up to 200 lion-rearing plants, with 8,000 captive lions more than twice as high as the estimated 3,490 free lions in the country's wildlife.

Tigers are also bred in South Africa. In 2015, there were 44 known facilities with at least 280 tigers reared for trade or as game hunts, violating CITES decisions.
Legal exports of skeleton and lion pieces from South Africa have increased significantly since 2008. Exports over this period alone exceed 4,200 lions.

The main destination countries for skeletons, bodies, nails, and teeth of lions and tigers are in Asia. Only 755 bodies were imported into Vietnam and Laos, a number of bones equivalent to 65 lions, 54 nails, 3,125 whole skeletons, 67 skulls, and 90 teeth, exclusively for commercial purposes.
Many of these pieces are falsely marketed as tigers and are sold in China and Southeast Asia. Indicatively, in May last year, a Vietnamese citizen was arrested with 680 nail tigers in his possession, although DNA tests showed that they were actually nails of lions.

For this reason, Asian buyers are now demanding evidence, further increasing the poaching of wild tigers. Since 2000, more than 950 tiger skins have either been seized or recorded in illegal trade, as well as more than 270 corpses, 1,800 kilos of bone and 12,000 tiger bones of wine.

Activists and environmental organizations are pushing the South African government to take urgent action to end this trade that feeds a market that not only consists of captive lions but also wild tigers.

Meet Tsar, the baby of a tiger and a lion!

He has all the characteristics of a king, even his name refers to Imperial Russia: Tsar, a baby lion, the fruit of an extremely rare passion between a female tiger and a male lion, monopolizes the interest of all in a traveling zoological park in southern Russia.
Lying on the couch in the zoo manager's truck, this pet with the typical beige lion's coat and the tiger stripes eagerly awaits the bottle of milk. "We do not leave it in the cage, it's very cold outside, we keep it here with us, it's asleep in our bed," said the director of the park, Eric Atlantian.

Czar was born on November 11th during a tour of the park in the Rostov region on Don, feeds goat's milk and drinks about one liter a day.
"His mother, the Princess, the only tiger in the park, has difficulty in giving birth and can not breastfeed. He gave birth to three of them, but only the Tsar survived," he said.

"Babies like these are extremely rare and generally weaker than lions or tigers", while males of this kind are sterile, explains Dmitry Milosardov, a researcher at the Darwin Museum in Moscow. "But if you care for them, they can grow up and live a lot."

Park management knows very well: Tsar takes as much milk as he wants, sleeps 16 hours a day and plays as much as he wants.
"We all deal with him, we are very proud of our little treasure, he is unique, our lion with the stripes," said Arabian.

The tiger has not yet accessed her baby, not his father, Caesar. The little one, already two and a half months, weighs 5 pounds and is still too young and fragile to meet his parents.

An unexpected love

Princess and Caesar stayed for years in neighboring cages and everyone was used to the presence of the other. When the tiger season came to an end, the administration was faced with a dilemma: to present Caesar as a suitor or face an angry Princess who desperately seeks a mate.

"We dared to leave the dividing line between the two cages half open, then seeing everything that happened, we took the risk of letting the two animals find a tet-a-tet," said Aviation. When it became clear that the tiger was pregnant, "we were delighted, it is so rare, a few, there are only 20 in the world".
The lion-Teutons, as well as the tyroloons (the babies of a lion and a tiger), are born only in captivity, Milosardov says. "These hybrids do not find them free in nature" primarily because the lions live in Africa and the Tigers in the jungles of Asia. They are crossed only in India, but there are also very different times for each one. "

Presently, the size of the Tsar does not exceed that of a big cat, "it often takes him to sleep in my arms," says Arabian. "But when our little King has grown up, he will certainly be heavier than his parents."
The few can weigh over 400 pounds while the maximum weight of a tiger is almost 300 pounds and that of a lion 250 pounds.

In the US, the 414-pound Hercules, measuring 3.33 meters in length, is considered according to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest feline in the world.

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