Why Captive Tigers Can’t Be Reintroduced to the Wild

[John] These tigers that they're producing

are worthless to the wild.

They're not genetically fit, they're not behaviorally fit

to be reintroduced to the wild.

[Matt] Netflix's The Tiger King:

Murder, Mayhem and Madness gives viewers a look

into the world of big cat ownership in America,

along with murder plots and unironic leather fringe.

But in the drama, it's easy to lose sight

of what's actually happening.

Big cats being bred, sold, and treated

as if they were everyday pets.

And these captive-bred animals will never be released.

They're no more useful to tigers in the wild

than domestic dogs are to wolves in the wild.

To find out what captive breeding

does to these endangered and threatened animals,

we talked to Dr. John Goodrich, a chief scientist

at Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization.

Before we get into the problems of captive breeding,

we hear the figure a lot that there are

more tigers in captivity in the United States

than there are actually living in the wild.

I was wondering if there's any truth in it.

How hard is it to quantify actually

how many tigers are here, given that this is a black market?

You hear the number five to 10,000 tigers

in captivity in the United States.

Nobody really knows, but it's probably

in the right order of magnitude,

'cause there's only about 4,000 tigers left in the wild.

But, the problem is there's no tracking of these tigers.

Every single tiger should be identified and tracked

from its birth to its death.

It's not a hard thing to do.

Tigers are walking barcodes.

Each one is identified individually by their stripes.

It's like a fingerprint.

And one of the arguments that these captive breeders make

is that, you know, if we're having populations crash

in the wild, why not breed them in captivity

and reintroduce them?

Why is that wrong-headed?

There's two things that happen

with these captive-bred tigers, and they're opposites.

One is inbreeding, low genetic diversity,

and that's primarily in white tigers.

All white tigers in captivity come from

a single white tiger captured in India decades ago.

So, you can imagine those tigers are very inbred.

But then the opposite happens,

where there's interbreeding among subspecies of tigers,

and they even hybridize tigers with lions and other species.

So, that makes these sort of genetic mutts

that are not of any use whatsoever in conservation.

There are a number of different

extant sub-species of tigers in the wild.

There's the Siberian tiger up in Russia and Northern China,

Indochinese tiger in Thailand,

Malay tiger in Malasia, Sumatran tiger in Indonesia,

and then the Bengal tiger in South Asia.

They have different adaptations

to their unique environments.

So, you wouldn't wanna take a Siberian tiger, for example,

and reintroduce it, you know, from the colds of Russia

to hot tropics of India or Sumatra.

Likewise, you wouldn't wanna take

a tiger that's either been severely inbred from captivity,

or outbred, some of these hybrids,

and reintroduce it and pollute the genetics

of the existing wild populations.

Beyond the genetics, why would it be so problematic

to reintroduce a tiger raised in captivity into the wild,

just based on the behaviors that it had developed

as it has grown up.

Especially some of these tigers from petting zoos,

or even some of the rescue centers,

they have an awful lot of exposure to people.

People are coming by, visiting them every day,

people are feeding them every day,

and they learn to associate people with food,

and they associate people with play and all sorts of things.

So, if you were to release one of those tigers

into the wild, in India, for example,

where you might have hundreds of people per square mile

surrounding the national park or tiger reserve

where you've released them, you can imagine,

those tigers are just gonna go right to people

looking for food, looking for entertainment, whatever.

And then you'd have a big problem on your hands.

So, people and tigers don't mix well.

Tigers are too big and too dangerous.

Are conservation groups breeding tigers

in a certain way such that they can be reintroduced

to the wild and not corrupt the gene pool?

Zoos that are accredited by AZA,

the Association for Zoos and Aquariums, in North America,

are required to be part of what they call

the Species Survival Program.

So, any tigers in those zoos are bred very carefully

to maintain their genetics,

to maintain their subspecies status,

but also to guard against inbreeding.

Theoretically, we could take tigers from zoos,

build a captive breeding center,

and then start to breed tigers so that cubs were produced

that were exposed to their natural wild habitat,

exposed to natural prey, and hopefully

could eventually be reintroduced into the wild.

But we usually don't wanna get there.

You know, that's the absolute last-ditch effort,

where if it comes to reintroductions,

it's a bit of a Hail Mary.

How does a program at a zoo that is maintaining tigers

different from what we're seeing

in a show like Tiger King?

First, zoos are not breeding tigers for sale.

They are breeding tigers to maintain

that genetic stock in captivity.

These petting zoos are breeding tigers to make money.

So, they're trying to pump out as many cubs as they can,

remember, the cubs are only worth anything to them

in the petting zoo until they're about four months old,

and then they become too dangerous

for the public to handle.

What happens to all those tigers?

We don't know.

That's a big concern.

Tigers breed really well in captivity.

So, it's easy for people to take them, breed them,

produce more tigers, and everybody wants

that selfie with a tiger cub.

So, that compounds the problem,

but you can imagine this animal, you know,

in the wild, tigers need anywhere

from 10 to hundreds of square miles

that they cover over the course of the year,

their home range, and you can imagine an animal

that should be wandering over that kind of area

in lush forests being kept in a small cage,

they don't do too well.

You know, so one of the things the accredited zoos do,

beyond trying to having natural habitat

and large enough enclosures, they do an awful lot

of enrichment where they're putting

different scents around the cage every day,

giving the animals different toys to play with,

different things to explore, so the animals

are constantly stimulated in ways they might

be stimulated in their natural habitat.

Can you walk us through what conservation

actually looks like out in the wild?

All tigers need is lots of inviolate space

with good habitat, high prey densities,

and to be left alone by people, and they thrive.

Tigers are most threatened by habitat loss,

and especially poaching.

Tigers are poached because they're extremely valuable

on the traditional medicine market.

So, while the recipe for tiger conservation is simple,

actually implementing it can be pretty challenging.

Tigers live in some of the most remote,

rugged, and difficult parts of the world to access,

so the patrol teams that are out there

trying to protect tigers from poaching

have a really tough job ahead of them,

in just finding the poachers,

capturing the poachers, and then, once captured,

you might be a week's walk into a forest,

you've gotta take them back out.

So, it's a pretty challenging task.

And what about legal protections here

for tigers in the United States?

So, tigers are on the United States

Endangered Species Act, and that gives them

a certain amount of protection,

but what that means is they can't be traded internationally,

and they can't be traded across state borders.

At the state level, many states have laws

against owning big cats and other wildlife species,

but many states allow it openly.

So, there is legislation being pushed right now

to make it illegal for private ownership of big cats

in the United States.

You know, well, what could we do with those tigers?

Do we put them in better homes in the United States?

Are there enough of those, given that

this black market is so big?

Would it be able to hold all of them?

It's a really tough problem.

If we were to pass legislation today

that banned ownership of tigers,

there's a number of different ways it could go.

You could start a phase-out period,

where maybe first these places are all required

to spay and neuter their animals,

and then when their last animal finally dies,

they close down.

If we were to just close it down

and try to find homes for all those tigers,

where are you gonna put them?

You know, there's a lot of rescue centers

around the country, most of those are at capacity already,

so the next choice would be to euthanize them

in the way we do with an awful lot

of our surplus dogs and cats,

and that of course would be tragic,

but the cost of maintaining these tigers

is also exorbitant.

And, you know, for the million dollars it costs

per year to run a rescue center,

we could protect so many tigers in the wild.

So, there's trade-offs too.

It's a real moral dilemma.

Do you have any advice for as to

how people can be smarter about finding good parks?

It's pretty simple, actually.

You can just look for zoos that are accredited by the AZA,

and the AZA has them listed on their website.

If it's not on the list,

doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad zoo,

but then you'll need to dig deeper.

I mean, if you get to take selfies with a tiger,

if you get to touch them, then no.

That's not a great establishment.

I was wondering if you had any insights

as to how you might be able to tell

if a tiger has been mistreated in captivity.

Some obvious physical signs might be

a tiger that's extremely thin or extremely fat,

or maybe shows some evidence of injuries.

But beyond that, you can learn a lot from their behavior.

If a tiger looks peaceful and content,

it's probably peaceful and content.

If it's pacing around its cage

and showing other kinds of neurotic behaviors,

then it's probably in too small of a cage,

it's not receiving enough stimulus.

We are gonna know the answer to this question,

but would a tiger ever make a good pet?

Absolutely not.

Think about having a 400-pound cat with three-inch canines

and three-inch claws in your living room

or in your backyard, and even a well-mannered,

completely non-aggressive individual,

obviously an animal that big with that kind of weaponry

could hurt you without even trying to.

[tiger roars]