Texas tiger tragedy

This editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News.

On Monday, U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted three people trying to make an illegal crossing into Texas near Brownsville. The trio fled after ditching a black gym bag, in which agents found their smuggler’s trove: a male tiger cub, about 3 months old, knocked out with tranquilizers to keep him quiet.

This startling find lends credence to an oft-cited and deeply dismaying estimate — that the world’s largest population of tigers, outside native habitats in India, is here in Texas.

Nature did not put them here. They’re pawns in the shady smuggling, breeding and back-page sales trade of exotic wild animals, because too many misguided people delude themselves into keeping them as roadside novelties or pets.

Tigers are not pets, and they never will be. They’re beautiful, dangerous, endangered animals, and in captivity, they require expensive and highly specialized maintenance. Texas endangers both its own residents and these magnificent cats in its indifferent, poorly enforced regulation of their ownership.

State law requires that tigers in private hands must be tracked through a mandatory registry, yet even that minimal requirement is virtually ignored. As the Austin American-Statesman recently reported, there are 50 animals listed on the state registry, yet wildlife agencies consistently estimate that Texas’ actual tiger population is upwards of 2,000.

An inconsistent patchwork of local laws and uneven enforcement contributes to the problem. Most cities outlaw ownership of exotic animals, but it’s perfectly legal in many rural and unincorporated areas.

Too many of these animals wind up sick, malnourished, forced to breed, and confined in claustrophobic cages. Occasionally, a human being — sometimes a child — is injured or killed because somebody was too dumb to grasp that tigers are not backyard pets.

“The tragedy here is that we do have laws, but the laws are not effective,” said longtime Dallas animal rights advocate Skip Trimble, advisory director of the Texas Humane Legislation Network.

Increasingly, wildlife experts have called for a uniform network of consistent regulatory laws and enforcement tightly tracking the status and whereabouts of exotic, potentially dangerous animals across country.

Texas can’t even get a handle on the location and welfare of the tigers within its own borders. We’ve got a long way to go.