Tilson also emphasizes the importance of protecting wild tigers,
pointing to programs set up by the World Wildlife Fund and
Wildlife Conservation Society to conserve vast swaths of
landscape in Asia. He cites a successful scheme in the Russian
Far East that rescued Siberian tigers from the brink of
extinction. Twenty years ago, he says, just 150 tigers remained
in the wild in Russia; in the last ten years, however, the tiger
population there has doubled or even tripled, thanks to hard-
nosed intervention efforts: aggressive patrolling for poachers'
trucks inside protected areas, roadblocks, inspections, arrests,
and stiff sentences. In an attempt to cut down on such poaching,
breeders in China have set up over a dozen “tiger farms,”
housing about 4,000 felines. Parts harvested from those
magnificent beasts are destined for the Asian medicinal market
[see photograph below]. Raising a farmed tiger is about 250
times as expensive as hunting a wild one, however, so illegal
trading remains alluring to poverty-stric