U.S. Border Patrol finds live tiger cub stuffed in a duffel bag

[HCM]

U.S. Border Patrol finds live tiger cub stuffed in a duffel bag


On Monday, agents found a 3-to-4-month-old tiger cub stuffed in a black duffel bag.

The baby big cat was abandoned when three people attempting to enter the United States illegally were intercepted at the border and fled back to Mexico.

The cub has been turned over to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville.


http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/38084132/us-border-patrol-finds-live-tiger-cub-stuffed-in-a-duffel-bag

[Prdator]

Shit like this really pisses me off...

[RoyGBiv]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/be/f4/e1bef4a7ed5af13f74ecdaa278cb9ae8.png

[Peally]

A wall with .50s lining it seems a better idea every day.

[blues]

Better check the cub's first few bowel movements for drugs even though the animal was probably intended for a private game reserve. Two paydays for the price of one job. (I've seen worse.)

Too bad they didn't get a hold of the miscreants to put them in a cage.

[OlongJohnson]

Apparently non-political discussion of the situation:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Tigers-and-Texas-We-don-t-even-know-how-many-7375558.php

Feline conservation group discussion:
https://www.felineconservation.org/maintaining_captive_populations.html

Director of that organization:
http://tiger.pictures-of-cats.org/2011/09/how-many-tigers-in-texas.html


Lynn Culver the executive director of the Feline Conservation Federation requested numbers from the USDA-APHIS office under the Freedom of Information Act. APHIS is the Animal and Plant Health Inspectorate Service, incidentally.

The answer is that there are "between 259 and 325 tigers living in Texas". The figure will be lower, Lynn says, because the Wild Cat Orphanage is shutting down. That facility has 60 large cats. Where are they going to, though? Are they staying in Texas. If so the figure won't be lower, it seems to me.

Lynn says that there are not lots of non-USDA tigers in Texas. She will address that issue later. Can we guess at the number of tigers in Texas that are not USDA registered? There is also a question mark hanging over the reliability of the USDA figures.

I did some moderate digging and the closest I can get to an actual basis for the claim that "there are more tigers in captivity in Texas" is a reference to "anecdotal data," which, when it comes to counting something like that sounds a lot like "making it up." I can't find anything pointing to the person who first compiled the anecdotes.