Let the Tigers Die

Why save the tiger? What exactly are we trying to preserve here? A beautiful animal, an entire ecosystem or the genetic diversity of life? Is it at all possible or even desirable to preserve and try and halt the inevitable extinction of the Tiger. We may prolong their survival, we cannot ever ensure it for ever.

I say, let Tigers die.

Shocked? I am sure, you are. Media exposure, campaigns, photographs, a deep rooted psychology that hates to see a powerful creature helpless makes many want to rush to save the Tiger. But pause, for a moment, think of the parallels between ideology that rests to a great extent today on philosopher Freidrich Neitzsche's and economist Joseph Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction.

One technology is wiped out when a better one comes around to replace it. Dinosaurs were wiped out when mammals arrived on the scene. No one could do anything to keep the dinosaurs around, not that that would have been such a great idea considering the absolute impracticality of dinosaurs coexisting with present human civilization. Either they would have stayed or we could have arrived.

Close your eyes (after reading what follows) and ponder coexistence where giant dinosaurs plodded through cities disrupting our traffic systems, breaking down buildings with their mega ton swishing tails and snorting the dragons breath down ten storey buildings. Ok, we could have kept them behind fences just as Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park promoters disastrously tried to do in the movie series, but then again, aren't we interfering with their natural way of survival? They would have consumed tons and tons of scarce food resources that humans are unable to spare for one another, leave alone for worthless dinosaurs.

All said and done, the dinosaurs became impractical for survival, a comet crash with earth removed many of them and then warm blooded mammals quickly scurried to occupy the space vacated by them, effectively sealing the possibility of their ever coming back to thunder their way around the planet. This is just one example, millions and millions of species have died out to make way for better evolved ones to inherit the planet as its atmosphere and its ecology changed over time.

Today we are the masters of the planet. The tigers are not geared to survive along with us. We cannot give them space to coexist. We can try, but we will fail. Humans have too divergent a thinking process and are too self centered. It is our nature. It is what we are programmed by evolution to do. We have taken over because we evolved to take over. All that we can do is to preserve their genetic imprint, their DNA, the code that builds the tigers in genetic repositories to make use of the blueprint if we ever require it at a later stage when our technologies are advanced enough.

How do we know what is right or wrong? Why are we so worried about the environment? What exactly is wrong with it? Are we being simplistic craving a changing past as an unchanging present? Consider for a moment that the changing environment, the changing composition of gases in the air that we breathe is something that is already happening and has always happened and is something to which some of us in the population are adapting, like we have always done. That is how we are here today and that is how we are getting ready to survive in the future. We will. We will evolve to cope, to live with it. So why do we struggle so hard to live in a present that will forever be try to be like the past?

When tiny green cells in the oceans of a young earth began to release oxygen into the atmosphere, there were many creatures that died out. The green cells were releasing a toxic gas called oxygen that wiped out many life forms. But then, in that toxic oxygen rich environment evolved cells that eventually led to us, almost three billion years later. Perhaps well meaning interventionists then too would have argued to prevent the `atmosphere' from being altered, from preventing the oxygen from accumulating. If that had happened, I wouldn't have been writing this and you wouldn't have been reading this. For we are all the present products of an unbroken lineage that stretches 3.5 billion years into the past. If even one of our ancestors had failed in the struggle to survive, if even one of the little fishes or reptiles that perhaps was one of our very distant ancestors had got crushed under a stone or got eaten by a predator our chain of life would have broken and we wouldn't have lived to tell the tale. And if there had been no replacing of species with better evolved ones to cope with a changing world, we would still be globs of protein in the primeval soup of the planet. And even if we don't realize it, the world around us is changing, the balance of species is changing. Tigers and polar bears along with millions of other species are losing out. They will have to die. They will have to go. They will go.

If petrol fumes are polluting the atmosphere, if there is smog, if there is toxicity in the water, if there is lead in the food, if there is arsenic in the groundwater, it is a preparation for the future. For it is the present. Love it or hate it. It is there. And nature is clever enough to get some of us to adapt.

The future will be different. We don't know what exactly will it be like, but we do know for sure that it will be different. If we don't continue to adapt, we won't survive. We too will be wiped out. For now, the Tiger's time is up.