Save tigers

My contribution in SAVE TIGER INITIATIVE would be too too small because I am writing this blog pretty late. But bigger contributions could be made by doing small things initially.

From childhood I would read stories in champak or other story books on tigers. Little did I know that as I would grow up tigers would became a rare animal. Tigers is our national animal and lots of things need to be done to save it from becoming extinct.

Tiger is a very beautiful as well as powerful animal. It has its importance right from the ancient times or may be way back when our gods existed on this planet. I would like to mention some stories of importance to the readers,

1) Tiger is a vahana i.e. vehicle of goddess DURGA. She killed a powerful demon mahisasura (buffalo headed), riding a tiger. Tiger has always been a symbol of power & might.

2) Ayyapan, son born due to the alliance between Siva & Vishnu when Vishnu turned to Mohini Rupa after churning of milky ocean also rode a tiger. He is the third son of Siva after Ganesha & Kartikeya. He was found by a childless king & queen on the banks of a river. Eventually the queen gave birth to her own biological son and started becoming jealous of Ayyapan. The queen pretended t be ill and would be cured only after drinking cow's milk. The 12 year old Ayyapan went to the jungle & came back riding a tiger followed by all the tigers o the forest. The king apologized and asked where his temple could be built. He fired an arrow which fell at shabri hence the shabrimalai temple was built.

The mention of tigers also occurs in Chinese, Korean, Sumerian, Japanese & European mythology.

It is very sad to know that tigers are now endangered species. Humans have always felt that killing the tigers is a courageous act. They kill them for mere pleasure, skin hunting & for acquiring various tiger body parts like bones, claws teeth etc.. Breaking the trees, throwing waste & plastic, industrial & hospital waste etc etc has led to disturbance in the ecosystem and thereby lessening the number of tigers.

In the past 1 year lot numbers of tiger deaths have been reported due various reasons like hunting, old age, human tiger conflicts, accidents etc etc.

There are just 1141 tigers left in India from the number 40,000 from the last century. Its time that we control our actions as well as act timely to save tigers before they became totally extinct.