I had scanned a large, plant-filled enclosure several times before locating him: a 70-something-year-old tortoise named Lonesome George. The tortoise weighs 88 kilograms (nearly 200 pounds), but he was barely visible beyond several bushes, and his head and legs were tucked neatly within his shell.

An adult Galápagos tortoise lumbers within a semiprotected space at a breeding facility on San Cristobal Island.

Bryn Nelson

Like a stubborn child who refuses to leave his room, George is not the most sociable tortoise in the world. But he’s by far the most famous, and I was happy to spot him—or at least his shell. That’s because George is the last known member of his species, sometimes called the Pinta tortoise.

A special place

George lives in the Galápagos Islands, a group of 19 islands in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles (a little less than 1,000 km) west of Ecuador. The islands are famous for their unique plants and animals. For example, many of the islands’ lizards, iguanas, tortoises, sea lions, seabirds, land birds called finches, and even a type of penguin, have been found nowhere else in the world.

Recent reports, however, suggest that many species in the Galápagos are in trouble. Scientists blame the growing problem on too much tourism, too many people moving to the islands, and the introduction of foreign plants and animals that are crowding out or killing native species.

Based on satellite photographs taken by NASA, this image shows the major islands in the Galápagos.

Wikipedia/NASA

But researchers and volunteers are working hard to save threatened animals such as the tortoises. Using a range of strategies, from radio collar–wearing goats to analyses of old tortoise bones, they are making a difference—and showing that a shy survivor named George may not be so alone after all.

The rarest creature

Before humans first arrived in the Galápagos Islands in the 1500s, 15 or more closely related tortoise species may have lived there. Twelve of those species still inhabit the islands, but two are extinct. Lonesome George is the last known member of the third.

A Galápagos tortoise shares a morning bath with a white-cheeked pintail in a duckweed-covered pool in Santa Cruz Island’s highlands.

Bryn Nelson

Scientists found George living alone on an island in the Galápagos called Pinta Island in the early 1970s. Because he is the last remaining Pinta tortoise that scientists know about, the Guinness Book of World Records has called him the “rarest living creature.”

I recently took a weeklong voyage through the Galápagos aboard a motor-powered yacht named the Letty. Aboard the boat, I met wildlife photographer Tui De Roy, who told me that several tortoise species were in even worse shape when she was a girl.

De Roy moved to the Galápagos Islands when she was 2 and lived there for more than 35 years. Now a resident of New Zealand, she helps oversee the Charles Darwin Foundation.

The foundation operates the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos. Scientists at the station advise the Ecuadorian government on how best to protect the Galápagos Islands.

By some estimates, De Roy says, up to 500,000 tortoises were killed for food or taken away as pets in the centuries before concerned people began protecting them. By the time preservation efforts began, perhaps only one-tenth of the original population remained.

Laws now protect the tortoises from hunting, but the lure of money still drives some people to kill the tortoises and sell their meat. Galápagos tortoises also face new dangers from animals that didn’t originally live on the islands, including goats.

Pesky goats

Over the past few centuries, fishers, pirates, sailors, and settlers brought goats to the Galápagos as a reliable food source. Unfortunately for tortoises, goats like the same types of grasses, fruits and leaves as tortoises do, and the goats are faster movers.

As the goats multiply, they beat tortoises to prime grazing spots. And they trample other favorite tortoise foods, like young prickly pear cacti.

As they stomp around, the hoofed animals can also squash sandy areas near the shoreline where tortoises build their nests. Over time, huge herds of goats can turn leafy forests into barren grassland.

This mural on the island of San Cristobal reads, “These introduced vertebrate animals are a menace in the Galápagos.” Pictured are a rat, cat, dog, pig, and goat—among the most destructive newcomers in the Galápagos Islands.

Bryn Nelson

Researchers have used helicopters, dogs, and even other goats to track down the goat invaders. The tracker goats wear radio collars that allow scientists and hunters to follow them as they mingle with wild goats. The researchers also put bright paint on the tracker goats, so hunters know to leave them alone but to nab their wild companions.

Goats be gone

The antigoat campaign has been paying off. Last year, researchers removed the last of an estimated 75,000 to 125,000 wild goats from the northern part of Isabela Island, which boasts more tortoise species than any other island in the Galápagos.

The victory built upon earlier successes on several other islands. On an island named Española, thousands of goats were removed in the 1970s, De Roy says. By then, the island’s native tortoise population had dwindled to 12 adult females and 2 males.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, researchers evacuated those few surviving tortoises to the Charles Darwin Research Station some 60 miles away. There, they set up an emergency-breeding program.

This male tortoise was once kept illegally as a pet. Now, he stretches out at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island.

Bryn Nelson

A third male tortoise from Española, named Macho, was already living at the San Diego Zoo. Scientists later brought him to the research station to help restore the island population. The descendants of Española have now helped resettle more than 1,400 tortoises on their goatfree native soil.

“Española is one of the most beautiful stories” of tortoise success, says Gisella Caccone, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University.

A stunning find

Earlier this year, Caccone and her colleagues announced another stunning discovery: Lonesome George may not be alone after all.

The discovery began with a routine study of the genetic material known as DNA. Every animal’s DNA is different, but researchers can look for common patterns among members of the same species that distinguish them from other species. A crow’s DNA, for example, looks significantly different from a hawk’s DNA, even though both creatures are birds.

First, Caccone’s team extracted a sample of DNA from George’s blood. The researchers also took DNA from the bones of long-dead Pinta tortoises that had been stashed away in museums for decades. By looking at samples of both living and dead specimens, the scientists came up with a profile of a typical Pinta’s DNA.

Next, the team compared the Pinta DNA with DNA from tortoises living on neighboring Isabela Island. They already knew the Isabela population had a mixed heritage, and they wanted to know more about where the ancestors of the Isabela tortoises had come from.

Their results surprised them. One young Isabela male tortoise, the scientists learned, shared half of George’s DNA. Caccone says that this discovery suggests that the youngster’s mom was likely born on Isabela Island. But his dad, like George, originally lived on Pinta Island, about 50 miles away.

No one knows how the tortoise father made the trip to Isabela. It’s possible that he and others rode to their new home with sailors or settlers, or on strong ocean currents. Unlike sea turtles, tortoises live only on land. Even so, tortoises have been known to survive for long periods in the ocean, whether floating by themselves or clinging to mats of vegetation. Some researchers, in fact, believe the first tortoises to arrive in the Galápagos Islands did so by floating westward from the mainland.

Either way, the new find has researchers hoping they’ll be able to identify more Pinta tortoises now living on Isabela—or at least tortoises that are partly descended from Lonesome George’s extended family. If they can find both males and females with Pinta DNA, scientists will start a new breeding program to pass on as much of that unique DNA to tortoise hatchlings as possible. If they’re really lucky, their breeding program may help the Pinta species survive. George, who seems completely uninterested in reproducing, would be off the hook.

These tortoise hatchlings are a few years old. Here, they seek shelter from the heat at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos. Researchers have bred these hatchlings in captivity and will release them into the wild

Bryn Nelson

Caccone’s group has done more than revive the hope of rescuing Pinta Island tortoises from the brink of extinction. Two years ago, the team also discovered a previously unknown species of tortoise on Santa Cruz Island, where most people in the Galápagos Islands live. The isolated population of about 100 tortoises still doesn’t have a formal name.

“The Galápagos can yield an incredible amount of new surprises,” Caccone says. “Think what you can find when you really study well the other islands.”

Going Deeper:

News Detective: A Galápagos Journey

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Word Find: Tortoise Hunt

To the nation’s founders, the big, white-headed bird represented freedom and majestic beauty, and it quickly became a national symbol. Today, the bald eagle is also an example of an environmental success story.

A bald eagle.

Mike Lockhart, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

In the 1960s, only about 400 breeding pairs of bald eagles remained in the lower 48 states. Now, thousands of bald eagles soar U.S. skies, and their numbers continue to grow.

“You hear a lot of bad news about what happens to wildlife, and species are added to the endangered species list all the time,” says John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C. But “we do have success stories,” he adds.

Bald eagles have recovered so well that the U.S. Congress may soon remove them from the list of endangered and threatened species. However, scientists are still debating whether this change ought to occur. The final decision should come this summer.

Endangered species

Trouble for bald eagles and other birds began when farmers began to use a chemical called DDT, which protected crops from insects but also killed birds and made the shells of their eggs dangerously thin. The U.S. government banned DDT in 1970, and bird populations started to rebound.

A bald eagle in flight.

Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

A law called the Endangered Species Act (ESA) also helped. Passed in 1973, the ESA makes it illegal to harm plants and animals listed as endangered or threatened. It also protects their habitats. If anyone wants to build on land where listed species live, scientists must review the proposal first.

“The act is a safety net intended to stop us before we drive a species to extinction,” says Cat Lazaroff of the law firm Earthjustice. “It helps us look before we leap and make decisions that allow us to live side by side with the wildlife in this country.”

The bald eagle’s recovery, Lazaroff says, is a perfect example of how well the ESA can work. It also illustrates how science and the law can team up to battle environmental problems. Organizations such as Earthjustice sometimes go to court to stop construction projects if scientists believe that development will put an endangered species at risk.

Coastline nests

Even though bald eagles are making a strong return, some scientists aren’t sure that these birds should be removed from the endangered species list anytime soon. To qualify for removal, a bird’s population must reach a certain size, and there must be strong evidence that the numbers will stay high.

For the bald eagle, there’s no guarantee of continued population growth, says Bryan Watts. He’s a bird ecologist at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. One problem is land development.

A bald eagle and its nest.

Mike Jacobson, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Eagles prefer to build nests along coastlines, Watts says, often in the same places where people want to live too.

“From a biological standpoint, bald eagles have recovered,” Watts says. “But every year we see larger and larger tracts of land being developed. If we look 50 years down the road, we’re concerned that . . . recovery will be reversed due to habitat loss.”

Watts also worries that taking bald eagles off the list might reduce scientific interest in the species. For 50 years, scientists have been monitoring eagle populations and gathering information about how to keep them healthy.

Bald eagles prefer to live along coastlines.

Dave Menke, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

In one recent study, William & Mary graduate student Catherine Markham, who studies eagle populations in the Chesapeake Bay, found that eagles reproduce best in certain areas of the bay where the salt concentration, or salinity, of the water is low. The Chesapeake Bay is on the eastern coast of the United States.

This tells us that “low-salinity areas have to be the focus of conservation efforts,” Watts says. “That’s where the heart of the [bald eagle] population is.”

Monitoring populations

Yearly monitoring has shown that a bald eagle needs to have an average of 0.7 chick per year to sustain the population, Watts says. When DDT contamination was high, that average dropped to 0.2 in the Chesapeake region. Now, the average is a healthy 1.8 chicks per year.

Keeping an eye on these numbers is essential for identifying population crashes in the future.

Bald eagle chicks.

Dave Menke, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Every March in the Chesapeake Bay, for example, Watts and his colleagues fly above the treetops to count eagle nests. In May, these researchers swoop into the canopy to count eggs. They also climb trees to mark birds. This lets them track the birds’ eating habits and other details of their behavior.

Such monitoring is important, Watts says, because the needs of society conflict increasingly with those of endangered species.

Opinions welcome

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting comments about the proposal to remove bald eagles from the endangered species list until May. If you have an opinion, there are several ways to make yourself heard.

A bald eagle.

Gloria Meschmeyer, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Through the Eagles Forever! Web site at http://eaglesforever.org/ , you can write to your senators in the U.S. Congress about bald eagles or about a recent proposal to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

You can also enter a contest by writing a story or drawing a picture about why you think eagles are important to the United States. The winner in each category will win a trip for four to Washington, D.C. The visit includes a behind-the-scenes visit to the National Zoo and meetings with celebrity judges. The deadline is April 30.

Good luck!

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Word Find: Bald Eagles

A gray wolf.

Gary Kramer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Like lions, tigers, eagles, and sharks, the wolf is a predator. It hunts other animals for food. Some people admire the wolf. Others fear it.

Visitors to zoos or animal parks tend to think that wolves, tigers, and other predators are pretty cool. Ranchers who are trying to protect their cattle have a very different reaction. They tend to like only one kind of predator: the dead kind.

Will Holder used to have the same reaction that most ranchers do. As a kid growing up on a ranch in Arizona, Holder learned early on that wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions were supposed to be evil, ever poised to pounce on a herd of innocently grazing cattle.

“What you did when you saw coyotes run across the road was to jump out of the pickup and shoot them,” Holder says.

As the years passed, Holder started to wonder if killing predators actually helped protect livestock. He asked his parents when a coyote had ever killed a ranch animal. His mother could remember just one incident, which had occurred during a drought in the 1950s.

A coyote.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Was it really necessary to shoot coyotes? Holder asked himself.

So, when Holder started his own ranch, he took a different approach. Instead of chasing predators away, he allowed them to live on the same land as his cattle do.

Holder still keeps a close eye on his livestock. He uses various strategies to give predators fewer chances to grab a farm animal. And it seems to work. After 8 years of ranching, Holder has yet to lose a cow to a predator.

Many of Holder’s neighbors think he’s crazy. But the idea of “predator-friendly” ranching is catching on. Perhaps predators, livestock, and people can live in harmony, after all.

Conflict

The message of living in harmony is becoming more urgent. Conflicts between people and predators are becoming more common because development and population growth are bringing people and wildlife closer together.

From tigers in India to lions in Africa, many of Earth’s fiercest and most magnificent creatures are rapidly heading toward extinction.

Many predators, including the lion in Africa, are in danger of becoming extinct.

“This problem is happening all over the world with basically every type of predator,” Adrian Treves says. He’s a conservation ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

When predators show up, farmers get angry, Treves says. “The most common response is to kill wildlife.”

Now, however, science is starting to suggest that predators have a far worse reputation than they deserve.

In an article in a book coming out later this year, Treves presents evidence that killing cougars, wolves, and bears benefited livestock on only a third of ranches that were studied. Even in these cases, the benefits lasted for just a short time.

In another recent study, researchers at the University of Stirling in Scotland looked at the effects of predators on livestock around the world. Their major review showed that, in places where lions, wolves, jaguars, and snow leopards live, predators cause only 3 percent of livestock deaths, at most.

The review also pointed out that most conflicts focus negative attention on one major predator, without acknowledging the damage that disease and other predators can do. In Spain, for instance, farmers kill red kites, an endangered type of bird, because the kites eat their rabbits. Meanwhile, there are 28 other predators there that also eat rabbits.

Overall, the study found, there’s just not enough evidence to conclude that killing predators does livestock any good. Nor did the number of predators in an area seem to affect how many livestock were killed.

Livestock threats

Still, it’s easy to see why ranchers might hate predators, even if they just suspect that the animals pose a threat to their livestock. The quality of their cattle or sheep directly impacts how much money they make. So, anything that endangers their animals endangers their ability to put food on the table.

Beef cattle on a ranch being herded to new grazing lands.

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Scientists take a less personal view. They focus instead on the importance of biodiversity—the enormous variety of life on earth.

In that spirit, every species has value, Treves says, and every species is worth protecting for its own sake.

Each species is connected to many others, he says. So, if you destroy one, you end up affecting the entire balance of nature.

In Wisconsin, for example, wolves eat white-tailed deer. Wisconsin’s wolves are in trouble, though, and the deer population has exploded as a result. All these deer have to eat something, and their diet now includes rare plant species, which are in turn becoming extinct.

People are paying a price for the imbalance, too—with chewed-up gardens and damaging collisions between cars and the hefty animals.

Predator havens

Predator-friendly farming might be the answer, Holder says. He was inspired to try it when scientists began reintroducing wolves in Arizona.

Holder’s first reaction was negative. “Reflexively, we thought, ‘No. They’re going to eat the cattle. The last thing we need is more of them,’” he says.

“Then, we started to recognize a lot of the little things that make up the big picture of how the environment works,” Holder says. “We recognized there was a role that the wolves could play.”

A captive Mexican wolf at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico.

Jim Clark, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Holder also developed strategies that made his cattle less tempting targets. To outwit a predator, he says, you have to think like a predator.

Holder likes to go out into the fields and just watch what wolves do. Then, he uses what he sees to prevent attacks from happening in the first place.

Holder has noticed, for instance, that wolves like to eat without a lot of hassle. So, he spends a lot of time with his cattle and moves them around a lot. He also keeps his cows clustered together. Attacking a large group is a lot less appealing to a predator than attacking a single cow.

The extra effort pays off, Holder says. There are now between 100 and 120 wolves living near his ranch, he says, but none has ever eaten any of his cows.

And people are willing to pay much more for his organic, predator-friendly beef than they would for ordinary meat in a grocery store, partly because they know their money is helping protect biodiversity.

A good deal

The wolves in Arizona seem to be enjoying the deal, too. They have plenty of elk, squirrels, deer, gophers, and cockroaches to eat.

And while no studies have actually looked directly at how predator-friendly farming affects predator populations, the strategy does seem to make sense to researchers such as Treves.

“We’re sure that predator-friendly management is going to help,” Treves says. “So far, the outlook’s pretty good.”

Driving a herd of cattle near Paisley, Ore.

Doug Wilson, U.S. Department of Agriculture

For his part, Treves has been studying wolves in Wisconsin. He’s trying to understand what makes some wolves more likely to attack than others. He’s also looking at factors that seem to encourage wolves to go after livestock.

Some patterns are emerging from his research. Mixing small wolf packs with large herds of livestock in areas where wild habitats overlap with ranchland, for one thing, seems to be a recipe for disaster. Carelessly throwing away animal carcasses causes problems, too.

Treves is also studying what makes some people react so strongly to wolves and other predators. Figuring out where people’s feelings about predators come from, Treves suggests, is the first step toward changing those feelings and protecting predators in the long term.

Learning to live together will take a lot of effort and a large dose of cooperation, Treves says. Eventually, though, maybe everyone will get along—wolves, tigers, people, and all.

Word Find: Predators

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Going Deeper:

Chartering a boat or taking your own vessel out to sea to go fishing for fun is a large industry. Yet, for a long time, people thought that all the fish caught in this way represent just a tiny fraction of the number of fish caught by commercial fishing boats and sold in markets or brought to factories.

Once targeted by both recreational anglers and commercial fishing boats, the lingcod is one of many saltwater species being overfished.

OAR, NURP, Alaska Dept. Fish and Game

The impact of sportfishing is much bigger than previously suspected, say researchers from Florida State University in Tallahassee.

When the researchers took a close look at U.S. fisheries data, collected over more than 22 years, they found that recreational fishing accounts for 4 percent of fish caught. Two types of fish, menhaden and pollack, make up the bulk of the commercial catch, however. When these two types of fish are left out of the analysis, the fraction of all other fish caught and killed in recreational fishing jumps to 10 percent.

Finally, the researchers looked just at species that have been classified as “overfished.” That’s where the numbers are more troubling. Recreational anglers account for 59 percent of red snapper landings in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, and 93 percent of red drum landings in the southern U.S. Atlantic.

In some places and for some types of fish, it might be time for stricter regulations, the researchers say. There are already limits on the number of fish that someone can catch in many locations. But regulators rarely limit the number of people allowed to go fishing.

People aren’t going to stop fishing. If they just threw back what they caught, though, the fish now at risk might be better off.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Milius, Susan. 2004. There’s a catch: Recreation takes toll on marine fish. Science News 166(Aug. 28):133-134. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040828/fob6.asp .

You can learn more about U.S. marine recreational fisheries at www.st.nmfs.gov/st1/recreational/index.html (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

Comments:

I now know that fishing for fun can really kill. And the orcas really need help. I hate what the world is doing to all the animals!—Megan, 13

Like most tourists who visit Ranthambore National Park in India, I went with just one goal in mind: to see tigers in the wild.

Twice a day, all year round, 10 open-topped trucks are allowed to rumble along the park’s dirt roads for a few hours. It costs 360 rupees (about $8, U.S.) to buy a seat on one of the trucks. Glimpses of tigers are free.

Starting off on a tiger safari at Ranthambore National Park, India.

E. Sohn

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. Forty tigers roam Ranthambore’s 388 square miles. But tigers hear and smell us long before we can see them. Some tourists I met near the park were lucky enough to see a handful of tigers up close during just one safari. Other people saw none, even after going out six or more times.

Still, I couldn’t pass up the excursion. It was an opportunity that might someday disappear. Tigers are among the most endangered animals on Earth.

In India, where about half of the planet’s remaining 7,000 wild tigers live, tigers face a number of threats, especially from a growing human population. More than a billion people live in India today, and development is rapidly expanding into what was once largely tiger territory.

Conservationists nonetheless remain optimistic. “The tiger will not disappear,” said P.K. Sen, director of the Tiger and Wildlife Program for World Wildlife Fund–India (WWF–India). He was kind enough to meet with me in his New Delhi office on a Sunday, the only day I spent in the city during a recent 3-week trip to India.

There’s no way, Sen said, that people will ever let the majestic cats die out. “The tiger has been a symbol of strength and might for thousands of years,” he said.

Majestic cats

Hundreds of years ago, there were many more tigers on Earth than there are today. An estimated 40,000 tigers used to live in India, Sen said, an area that once included modern-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other neighboring lands.

P.K. Sen of WWF–India with a photo of sparring tigers.

E. Sohn

From the beginning, tigers inspired awe, respect, and fear in people. And with good reason. An adult male Bengal tiger may weigh more than 500 pounds.

The graceful cats stalk, crouch, and explosively pounce on their prey, which includes deer, pigs, cattle, and other large animals. To kill, they grab the prey by its neck and either snap its spinal cord or suffocate the animal. One tiger can eat more than 40 pounds of fresh meat in one sitting.

Tigers repeatedly star in Indian stories as symbols of power and strength. The powerful Hindu god Shiva, for one, is often shown wearing a tiger skin. The Hindu goddess Durga rides a tiger into battle, symbolizing her ability to defeat demons that no one else can vanquish.

In palaces throughout India, I saw old paintings of maharajas, or rulers, on epic tiger hunts. Even though the hunters usually rode elephants into the jungle to protect themselves and used guns to hunt, killing one of the planet’s most powerful animals was a way for men to show off their own strength. A successful hunt usually brought home one or two dead tigers.

As weapons grew more sophisticated, though, one hunter could kill more than 1,000 tigers in a lifetime, Sen said. At the same time, the Indian government decided that tigers were a threat to people and offered rewards for killing them.

“Can you believe that I have seen in my lifetime as little as 20 rupees (that’s 40 cents) paid by the government for shooting a tiger,” Sen said.

Beginning early in the 20th century, tourists from around the world flocked to India just to shoot tigers. By the late 1960s, however, most visitors couldn’t find any. A rough count at that time turned up fewer than 2,000 tigers in all of India.

Losing tigers

Losing tigers would be an enormous disaster, Sen said. Tigers are important predators at the top of a food chain. They play a vital role in India’s ecosystems.

Without tigers to keep deer populations in check, for instance, deer would multiply out of
control and eat up all the vegetation in an area. That could lead to flooding or soil changes. Silt could fill rivers that people depend on for irrigating their fields.

Losing tigers would also be a shame because the animals are so breathtakingly beautiful and impressive. “If you see a tiger in the wild, you will fall in love,” Sen told me, as we sat sipping cups of spicy milk tea. “You’ll simply be hypnotized.”

“You forget everything when you see a tiger,” he said. “Every movement is phenomenal. They are powerful, swift, cunning, smart, charming. They are the most attractive things in the world.”

Sen is not alone in his passion for tigers. The animals are now so important to India’s national identity that the government started a program called Project Tiger in 1973 to put aside land just for the protection of tigers. Today, there are 27 tiger reserves, covering more than 37,000 square miles.

Tigers are thriving inside the reserves. Outside of them, however, things aren’t going quite as well. As human populations grow, conflicts between people and tigers are becoming more common, and tigers usually lose. When tigers attack grazing cattle, for instance, farmers often retaliate by poisoning the cats.

In response, WWF–India is setting up a compensation program in a number of areas around the country. When someone’s cow is killed by a tiger, WWF–India will give that person money to make up for the loss and turn him away from taking matters into his own hands. The money comes from donors to WWF–India.

Other organizations are battling the problem of poaching. Some people illegally kill tigers to sell their valuable bones, furs, and other body parts. The Wildlife Protection Society of India, for one, helps officials nab poachers and seize their wares.

Zoo story

Disappointed with my safari and desperate for at least one tiger experience in India, I decided to go to the zoo in New Delhi on my last day in the country. In a fenced-off area, I saw two tigers lying lazily in the sunshine. One looked at me and yawned. The other barely twitched a whisker.

A Bengal tiger at the New Delhi zoo in India.

E. Sohn

As I was about to leave the zoo to catch my airplane home, I heard a spine-chilling roar. There, behind me, was a giant Bengal tiger pacing fiercely around a small cage. A crowd of people gathered to watch the tiger strut and bare its teeth.

The sight was both magnificent and terrifying. I was glad the cage bars were strong. Maybe I didn’t need to see a tiger in the wild after all.

Going Deeper:

Questions about the Article

News Detective: Emily’s Tiger Safari

Word Find: Tigers in India

Additional Information