Good story in today's paper by Fidelis Satriastanti about the upcoming Bali conference on tiger conservation.

The government likes to talk up its programs and initiatives for protecting critically endangered animals but when it comes down to it, as the head of the country's directorate for biodiversity conservation admitted, it only provides Rp 15 billion ($1.65 million) a year in state funding for ALL of its conservation programs, not just for tigers.

It's a sad indictment that while the tigers continue to be pushed closer and closer to extinction, state officials continue to steal more than that every year to line their bank accounts.

I hope this plan is to "adopt" tigers and keep them in the wild, rather than "adopting" them and keeping them in cages in their own homes or offices, as they usually do. I can imagine this plan will be met with wilting stares of disbelief by the representatives of other countries.

A terrible reality is that most probably at least a few of the very same people who will soon be able to show off a tiger in their gardens (please make sure that everybody knows how much of a "rent" was paid!), in addition to their 5 cars in the garage, are probably the same, whose various companies are actually responsible for the destruction of the natural habitat of these animals!

Artemus Jones, as sad as it is, I agree fully to your comment, the one question remains though: Will the money, these people pay (and honestly I think it's not enough!) really be flowing back into conservation efforts, or will the flow just make a few knicks and turns to return mostly back to the ones who paid it in the first place, or, even worse, will it disappear in some dark and deep pockets of some unscrupulous officials (as it happens all too many times!) Who will control it?

And, in the end, I remember vaguely another article a couple of months ago, which basically introduced these scheme in discussion, plus the (meager) space requirement requested for these captive tigers, there it was still displayed as 1 Billion Rp. for a single tiger, now it is already a pair, so basically one goes for 500 Thousand!

As much as it sickens me to the stomach to have such majestic creatures essentially sold off to vain rich people looking to impress their neighbors, unfortunately it looks like this harebrained scheme might be one of the few things left this country can do to save them.

The idea is simple: Assign a high value to live tigers, which reduces the demand for them dead. Let's face it, other efforts have fallen flat, such as law enforcement (just look at that tiger killed and then skinned while in its enclosure at the Jambi zoo) and habitat protection (Sumatra's still vanishing rainforests), so other creative ideas are needed.

If taking money from stupid rich people - and being put back into conservation efforts - will save the tigers from extinction, then (unfortunately) so be it. If it keeps going as it is now, the only place future generations will find tigers is in pieces in the Chinese medicine markets...

What about a Rent a rat plan?