This article starts off by talking about how over 1,000 body parts of different tigers were found this past decade. This is an astonishing amount since there are only an estimated 3,200 tigers living around the world. An average of approximately 119 tigers were killed per year, with India being the highest of those. This is not surprising since India has approximately half of the world's tigers. People have been smuggling different parts, including skin, bones, claws, teeth, skulls, meat. These body parts have been used for various purposes, like decoration or medicine. The article examines the enforcement of these laws, and ends with saying that approximately 100,000 tigers were alive about one hundred years ago.
Before reading this article, I was relatively clueless as to the status of tigers. I knew they were endangered, but I didn't know their extinction was this close. It's heartbreaking that people continue to kill tigers, even though it's so obvious that they're endangered, and for such trivial reasons such as good luck charms. I think people need to really start changing the punishment for killing tigers. I can't imagine what it would be like to say, when I'm twenty, "Remember when tigers existed?" How sad. If there's an extremely large punishment for killing tigers, and it's monitored more closely, it would be hard for people to commit the act in the first place. I'm glad I read this article--I had no idea the problem was so serious.
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