(upbeat jungle music) - [Narrator] Tiger. Iconic symbol of the wild. The apex predator that
we both fear and admire. (tigers roaring) In our imaginations,
they rule the jungle. But today, most tigers have
never even seen the wild. The vast majority of them
spend their lives in captivity. - [Woman] Want your meat? - [Narrator] Meet Princess,
an American tiger. A distant relative of
her wild ancestors, (slurping) she doesn't even
know how to hunt. Most American tigers
are not found in zoos. They are privately owned. - [Trainer] All right, this. - [Narrator] There are more
than twice as many of them as the highly
endangered wild tiger. This could change if new
legislation is passed that would ban the
private ownership and
breeding of tigers. Could the American tiger
help save the species? Or is it facing extinction,
just like it's wild cousins? (crowd talking) Tigers are one of the
worlds most popular animals. Everybody loves to see
a tiger at the zoo. Even the scientists who work
around them are impressed by their majesty. Ron Tilson is the Senior
Conservation Advisor at the Minnesota Zoo and a
renowned expert on tigers. He spent many years
tracking and studying them in the jungles of asia. - My heart beats faster
every time I see one. Yeah, there's a... It's because they
represent everything. They are the icon
of Asian wilderness. They are the most powerful
cat, the largest cat. They are, in my opinion, one
of the most attractive cats. But it's also the
fact that essentially, we have evolved as a
species with the tiger and the tiger is one of
the only animals on earth that preys and eats people. When a tiger looks
at a human being, I think the tiger sees us
for exactly what we are. We are nothing more
than a piece of meat. - Yeah.
- Tiger. - [Mom] Tiger. (kids babbling) - [Dad] What is tiger doing? - [Narrator] The tiger and
the power it represents have always fascinated us. At the beginning of
the 20th century, there were still 100,000
tigers in the forests of Asia. (gong crashes) The first tigers came to
America as entertainers. Before zoos and circuses
controlled their breeding, surplus animals found their
way into private hands. Soon, everyone from
the rich and famous, to companies and sports teams, wanted a piece of the big cat. For many Americans, like the character of Tony
Montana in the movie Scarface, owning a tiger became
a symbol of success. Martin Dinnes is a
celebrity veterinarian and was one of the first to
specialize in exotic animals. His talent and his
reputation led him to work for A-list stars
like Michael Jackson, and the magicians
Siegfried and Roy. He witnessed first hand the rise of the American
tiger population. - The tiger pet phenomenon
became a trend, I would say, in the early 60s. We could be driving in
Beverly Hills and see a person driving a convertible
with a tiger sitting up in the back seat. Or people owning a jaguar, a big jaguar, driving around in
their Jaguar with it. There were no
import restrictions. There were no restrictions
on the sale out of pet shops for these kind of animals. You know, a little tiger
cub is nice and cute, so people thought it
would be fashionable. It was unique, they
could show it off and it was trendy then. - [Narrator] The pet tiger
phenomenon may have existed briefly in other
parts of the world, but it never had the dimensions
it's taken on in America. In the 1970s,
actress Tippi Hedren, the star of Alfred
Hitchcock's The Birds, embarked on an
unusual film project. She starred in the movie Roar,
where actors and crew members rubbed shoulders with
dozens of lions and tigers. - I can't believe
we did all that. That we were foolish
enough to do it. So many of us were hurt. You know, that it was... Insanity! It was truly insane here. - [Narrator] Tippi
Hedren radically changed. She converted the Roar movie
set into The Shambala Preserve, a sanctuary for abused
and neglected big cats. (tiger roaring) Her strong stance
against private ownership has drawn attention to
the issues facing captive and wild big cats. In the wild, tigers
are threatened by
habitat destruction and human encroachment. They have been hunted and
poached for their skins. Most of all, they suffered
from the illegal trade of their parts for use
in traditional medicine. 97% of the species
have been wiped out over the last 100 years. And with only 3200
wild tigers left, they are facing a total crisis. - Just about everything
has been tried, and just about
everything has failed. Everyone is trying to think
through how to go about making a future for tigers, and the bottom line is that we've failed in every example. There's no one place you
can put your finger and say, aha, here's the magic formula
on how to save tigers. (peppy jungle music) - [Narrator] Tigers have been
on the Endangered Species List since it was established. In 1973 it became illegal to
import tigers born in the wild. So the tigers living in
the United States today are American, born and raised. The population of captive tigers
has been steadily growing. In the wild, the female
spends a couple of years teaching her three or
four cubs how to hunt and fend for themselves. But in captivity she
can breed every year. Today, most American
tiger are privately owned and some people still
keep them as pets. Zuzana Kukol and Scott
Shoemaker live in the small town of Pahrump, Nevada. - Pebble. - [Narrator] With
their six tigers. - [Zuzana] Hey baby. I know, I know, mama's girl. - If your definition of pet
is something you throw food at and it's nice and docile,
okay then, that's not a tiger. If you want high-maintenance
animal that you feed, you're gonna have to train, you're gonna have
to be consistent, and it's gonna be a
long-term relationship, and almost become a way of life. Okay, a tiger may be for you. - Step. That's my girl! That's my girl. In the cage, it's just fun. Outside, that's when it's like, okay we are going for the ball, we are gonna go
for the training. So outside is like
you are in school. In the cage it's their
place, it's their home. So basically that's
the golden rule. You don't push them into any
set of straining in the cage and you never ever turn
the back on a tiger. - [Narrator] But not all
captive tigers are pets. Some private owners see
themselves as conservationists and believe America as
the tiger's Noah's Ark. Patty Perry runs her own
center for conservation and education in
Southern California. She is also the Vice-President of the Feline
Conservation Federation, the largest organization
promoting private ownership and breeding of captive exotic
cats in the United States. - It's far from perfect,
but in our world today we have to have
captive breeders, private captive breeders. We have to have
private educators, because the zoos
can't do it all. You don't get that kind
of contact and that kind of one-on-one at a zoo, at all, and if we didn't have private captive
breeding and ownership, many, many species
would go extinct. They have been poached,
they have been hunted, for their pelts and for
their internal organs. And we have very,
very low populations. This is Prada, the standard. The snow white is Vishnu. This is my little
red-headed step-child, and this is the one,
the golden tabby, there are only 36 of
these in the world. He's gonna be our
biggest tiger here. The tiger's is very
much an emotional bond. They respond emotionally. I got them all as babies
so I bottle raised them. So there's that connection, they identify me as
like Mom with milk. Who wants to feed a tiger? (kids gasping) Okay I'm gonna start on this
end and give you guys a chance. I want you to hold the stick. Just hold the stick and
put it right through there. Come on and get a bite. Okay, next. These cats have been six
generations captive-bred, and their primary contact
being human beings, are not gonna be the same
as a cat that's in the wild. It's a completely
different animal. Will they ever be domesticated? No, they're wild animals. - [Narrator] Even experienced
owners are not immune from accidents. In 2003, famous Las Vegas
entertainer Roy Horn was mauled during a performance by one of his beloved tigers. - The tiger just grabs him like, looks to be right around
here in this area. Grabs him, just locks on him, picks him up and just drags him. - We just heard all this
commotion behind the curtain and you could hear his screams.
- Reminded everyone - [Narrator] that
even trained tigers are unpredictable and dangerous. (dramatic music) - For 40 years, those guys
did two to three shows a day, in the beginning
seven days a week. That's a lot of
exposure to a tiger. You fall down in front
of one of these big cats, and especially with tigers, they're gonna carry you off, regardless of what your
relationship is with 'em. He's got a thing for me, Patty. - [Patty] I know, he does. - In my career as a
zoological veterinarian, I've worked the gamut of facilities and owners that have tigers. There's the zoos,
there's the circuses, there's the private collectors. Years ago there were a lot
more of the illicit owners of these animals. I've worked for all of them
and I don't discriminate. I have done the best
I can to discourage breeding by unqualified
individuals, but I took an oath. Is it my business to say no I'm not gonna treat this tiger because
you own it privately? That's on the other
side of medicine for me. - [Narrator] Lisa Anne
Tekancic is an attorney in Washington, D.C. Her organization, the Wildcat
Conservation Legal Aid Society is trying to determine
the exact number of privately owned tigers. - Hey I'm calling to
follow up with you on the tiger research. You were gonna finalize
some of the numbers for, which state are you
still working on? What are we looking at? Alabama. - [Narrator] The
actual number of tigers in the United States is still
a matter of speculation, but the enforcement of
laws already in place is problematic. Legislation varies
from state to state. At the federal level, the
Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior
both enforce different laws affecting tigers. There's no single
government body responsible for tiger welfare. - Well we don't really know how
many tigers are held captive in the United States. It's a very good question, because estimates
tend to go all over. Some say there's 5,000
cats in captivity, tigers, some say there's up to 10. The problem with the
numbering system is that the two federal agencies
that are there to enforce our Endangered Species Act
and the Animal Welfare Act, don't know how many
tigers are out there, which is very troubling
because we need to get a handle on the number of cats. - [Narrator] As hard
as it is to imagine, big cats can be
found everywhere. Even on the fifth floor
of an apartment building in the heart of New York City. Like on an October day in 2003. - [Reporter] This
police video shows Ming, full grown, 325 pound tiger,
left home alone by its owner in unit 5E of a Harlem
apartment building. - [Narrator] If the number
and the location of big cats is a source for concern, a larger concern might just
be the irresponsible owners. (crowd yelling) Screening for them
remains difficult. In 2005, near the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library in Moorpark, a stunning example of human-tiger
conflict occurred. - I saw the tiger right there. It was real slow. She was just about this
high up to the fence. - [Narrator] Newly
retired George Gross was the incident commander at the California Fish
and Game Department. For more than three weeks, he
chased a tiger on the loose in a residential area. He got no help from
the cat's owner and on a February morning he had
a difficult decision to make. - Basically, this was
like a city living in fear for a month, because somewhere
there was this large tiger running around in
their neighborhood. We didn't see it
for quite a while, but we knew it was in here. So when it climbed out, it was
like it came out of nowhere. All of a sudden
everybody could see it. It started walking around
quite slowly through the grass. I was within 150 yards of it. The first thing I thought
was what a majestic animal. This thing is beautiful. But then, I came back
in and it's like, but I have this job to do, too. So it started walking towards me and then it started
going up a trail. I sat there and said I
can't have it up here on the soccer field,
baseball field. And our opportunity to take
a shot really diminishes. So that's when I gave the order
for people with rifles to, if they had a clean
shot, to take the shot. - [Reporter] A male tiger
weighing as much as 600 pounds, was taken from
the hills near the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library by wildlife officials who say they had no
choice but to kill it. - I've always felt
that I unfortunately made the right decision,
and to be honest is, the first thing I did was
pat him and say I was sorry. 'Cause I knew I didn't
want to kill him. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] George
Gross was not the last law enforcement agent
faced with such a decision. There was an even
more dramatic incident on October 19th, 2011 when
there was a massive release of wild animals in
Zanesville, Ohio. The owner of a private
zoo threw open the gates of his facility before
committing suicide. This time, it was not one tiger
but 18 tigers on the loose. They were all killed
by the authorities, along with lions,
bears, and monkeys. - It probably will
come to another tragedy before certain laws are either
enforced like they should be or new laws are gonna
have to be implemented. To have multiple situations
happen because we're not moving on these issues is very
tragic and it's very sad, not only for the individuals
but the cats that are involved, because most of the time
those cats are shot on sight. I'd rather see us be
in a proactive mode versus a reactive mode. (tigers roaring) - [Narrator] Is it time to
ban the private ownership of tigers and other
exotic animals? (drum music) 19 states ban the private
ownership of tigers, but it's still legal to
own and to breed them if you have a federal license. Stories of tiger cubs sold at
swap meets or on the internet are galvanizing the opponents
of the private ownership of big cats. In Washington, a political
and legal battle is under way. - People can't believe that
these animals are still being born to be sold as pets. And you can get them
for any amount of money if you're foolish enough to pay. When you see those little
cubs, they're cute. But by the time they're seven
months old they're tearing up your house and taking a
pretty good chunk out of you, 'cause they don't
have a 400-pound mom
to say knock it off, nor do they have any
siblings with whom to play. So you become the sibling,
and they're tough. You're dealing with
an apex predator. They are top of the food chain. One of four of the most
dangerous animals in the world. Yet our government
says that's okay, and they will even give
a permit to have these apex killers in somebody's backyard. It's very wrong. - [Narrator] Tippi Hedren
decided that something needed to be done and contacted
her congressman. She successfully proposed
a new law to prevent taking big cats
across state lines. But this was just the beginning. - So I took a bill to
Washington in 2003. I was simply to stop these
animals moving from one state to another and it took two years. It was title the Captive
Wildlife Safety Act. It was sort of a precursor to
the bill that I am ultimately, my goal is to have a bill
that will stop the breeding of all of these animals
to be sold as a pet or for financial gain. - [Narrator] Tippi Hedren
is not alone in her quest to end the private ownership
and breeding of tigers. Conservation organizations fear
that the captive population of American tigers
could contribute to the lucrative global
trade in tiger parts for traditional medicines. For now, tiger farms
in china and poaching are the main source of parts. - To have a state law,
and we have 50 states, banning breeding of
tigers in captivity, would be too problematic
and it's easier to make it a federal regulation, then we don't have
50 different laws that could have as many
different exemptions. So it's easier to do it
at the federal level. The private ban is really
focused on going after the individuals who are
these backyard breeders that are out of the radar. - [Narrator] Many private owners
who have all their permits, believe they have every
right to keep tigers. - Come on, Ninja. Well the possibility of
a federal ban would be a nightmare. There are more and more
and more restrictions. All the time. All the time, more
and more regulations and more and more restrictions. You have to, again you
have to be organized, you have to have lobbyists. You have to present your side
of it to the right people. It's a political thing,
it's a money thing. - [Scott] Yeah,
that's it, go on. - The ban's on exotic
animals, not just cats, on many exotic animals, are being proposed under
the guise of public safety. Which is ridiculous because
all captive big cats, including zoos and all
cats, not just tigers, kill one person in
the USA per year. Tigers may 0.8 person
per year so basically three people get killed
every five years. But that includes the big
zoos not just pet tigers. - [Narrator] The organizations
pushing for the ban are also concerned
about tiger welfare. Even federal agencies have set
very low standards of care. A three-by-three meter cage
is the minimum requirement. Tammy Thies manages the
Wildcat Sanctuary in Minnesota. She's heard countless
stories of abused animals and careless owners. - Most of the animals,
including the tigers, at the sanctuary come from
people who think a tiger would make a good pet. We hear all the stories. It got aggressive. It turned on me. I can't find vet care. I lost my homeowner's insurance. I didn't know it
would get this big. I didn't know it
would eat this much. And we tell people, a
wild animal is not a pet, and it never should
be kept as one. Titan, behind me, that
tiger was illegally owned and should have been
seized under the state law. Had he been seized
prior to that, his owner would
still be alive today. - [Narrator] Stopping
people from acquiring and breeding tigers
is one thing, but opponents of the
ban say that if tigers were to go extinct in the
wild, it would be better to have American tigers
than no tigers at all. - My question is, if
you ban these animals, we can no longer
keep and breed them, so they will be
extinct in captivity. Now they go extinct in the wild. What have you accomplished? You kill the species. So the ban, if you accept
captivity as conservation, the federal ban on all
ownership and breeding of exotic pets would actually
make the situation worse because the extinction
of this animals would come much
sooner, unfortunately. So those people are not doing
any service to these tigers. We are crowding out all space. We are doing it because
we enjoy doing this. We are pet owners, we
want to be left alone. We don't pass judgments on
who should own these animals. We do everything right. We are basically,
how do you say? Live and let live. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] A ban on
breeding or keeping tigers has much broader implications
than a ban on pit bulls. The United States is the only
country thinking of reducing its tiger population
while across the world, extraordinary efforts are
being made to save them. For Ron Tilson, zoo
tigers represent a backup for the wild population. He's been the Coordinator of the Tiger Species
Survival Plan designed to maintain healthy
and genetically diverse tigers. - In the zoo world we
try to have what we call hands off management. That means let's
not touch tigers, let's not play with tigers, let's consider them
really quite dangerous. For the longest time I
refused to even call a tiger by a name, I'm not particularly
fond of house names. (clears throat) To me they're numbers. They're a stud book
number and I see a tiger more as a collection of genes. (clears throat) What I'm concerned about is
the future, way down the line, that these animals still
maintain their tigerness. (melancholy chime music) - [Narrator] Scientists
have divided tigers into nine sub-species, three of them have
already gone extinct. The Bali tiger in the 1930s,
the Caspian tiger in the 1960s, and the Javan
tiger in the 1980s. Surviving are the
Siberian or Amur tiger, the Bengal, the Indochinese, the Malayan, and
the Sumatran tigers. They are all endangered and
the last South China tigers can only be found in captivity. - [Ron] We know every tiger
in the North American zoos, and we know its lineage. We know every parent,
grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great grandparent. All the way back to its
wild-caught mother and father. So we know exactly
where they came from in Russia for the Amur tigers and we know who they mated with
and who are their offspring. So we have these
giant family trees. - [Narrator] Unlike
zoos, most private owners don't know the lineage
of their tigers because no one has kept
track of their pedigrees. - [Scott] Yeah,
there you go, Elvis. - [Narrator] Tigers from
different sub-species resemble each other, and most
breeders are not interested in keeping sub-species pure. - As for sub-species, I
don't believe in them. I don't care. Some of them might have
more Bengal blood in them because some of them
don't actually grow the big, thick fur in winter. Some of them do so I
know they have a lot of Siberian blood in them. American tiger is the tiger
that can come in four colors. Regular orange, regular white, snow white which is the white with almost no stripes,
(chains rattle) and the one that's
making noise right there, it's what's called golden
tabby or strawberry tiger, which is basically orange tiger with almost no black stripes. - [Narrator] The white
tiger is the best example of breeding for looks. Loved for it's
striking appearance, it is not a sub-species
but a color morph. The result of a recessive
gene only found in one out of every 100,000 tigers. White tigers are almost
non-existent in the wild, but they are often
bred in captivity. This has made them
highly in-bred, and that's not the
only consequence of
private ownership. - People notice that
many tigers in captivity might be bigger
than in the wild, because in the wild you must
stay athletic to catch prey. In captivity, they get their food served
basically on a silver platter. One of the reason many
tigers in captivity are huge, they are simply fat. They are obese, not
good for their liver. Part of the stuff
American tigers are fed is basically stuff we eat,
it's from supermarket. Some of the meat might
have some hormones in them. The other theory is, somebody
might selectively breed for bigger size because it
looks impressive on display. Huge tiger it looks more
impressive than small tiger. Might be simply because they
just don't exercise as much as the ones in the wild. Because any cat,
even in the wild, if they don't have to
move, they don't move. They sleep. - [Narrator] The scientific
community has labeled these tigers as generic. They look like tigers,
but are they really? Could they be part
of a world-wide
conservation strategy? (tiger roaring) Tigers in the wild are
solitary and secretive, coming together only
during the mating season. In captivity, they become
very sociable with both humans and other tigers. They don't know how to
hunt and would starve if left on their own. Has the very essence of
tigerness been bred out of them? And if so, what is the
value of American tigers? - What we do know
about sub-species, legitimate sub-species, is that we know what
their genetic makeup is, according to molecular biology. Okay, it can be defined. That is why the private
ownership tigers, they will never contribute
to the conservation of wild tigers simply because, not because they're not a tiger, because in a sense they
are Panthera tigris, that's the Latin name
for what a tiger is, but it's, they've lost their tigerness. They've lost their tigerness
and what we mean by that is they have been in-bred and
cross-bred to the point where no one knows what
their lineages are, and everyone knows the
more in-breed you have, the greater risks or
susceptibility to diseases. You become less fit and
when you become less fit, your ability to survive in
the wild becomes negligible. The American tiger is
really a junk tiger. It is nothing more than
an illusion of a tiger. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Ron Tilson and
Tammy Thies met in 2005, when they worked together to
stop the breeding of tigers in Minnesota. - Good, how are you. - [Narrator] They're
concerned about the conditions in which private
tigers are kept. - Sabrina is supposed to
be a Sumatran-Bengal mix, and she's our worst
abuse case we've seen. She charged the fence non-stop. - Mm-hmm, but she
does have, from this, up around the face and that, sort of this
Sumatran look to her with the really black stripe. - [Narrator] Ron
Tilson and Tammy Thies would welcome a federal ban
on breeding and ownership if it were to pass tomorrow. - I wouldn't want to see
these animals abused. You can't do that, that
I would lose sleep over. But I would certainly like
to see them all neutered and I would like to see
them well taken care of until they die. Would that bother me? No. That would put me to
sleep really well. We'll just simply lose a large
number of worthless tigers that consume resources that
should be spent on wild tigers, and that actually
corrupt the message that we're doing something
wonderful for tigers when in fact, we're not
doing anything for tigers. Why are we spending all of
this time and energy and money in trying to protect
the right to own this or even allowing it to happen, and putting people at risk? And I keep coming back
to these same issues. I don't get it. I don't get why
it isn't stopped. - [Narrator] Conservationists
have been reluctant to study, or to give any attention
to American tigers, however with the
crisis in the wild, some in the scientific
community have decided to take a closer look
at these generic tigers. Stephen O'Brien is Chief of the Laboratory
of Genomic Diversity at the National
Cancer Institute. He's an authority
on big cat genetics and evolutionary biology. But his work has
sparked controversy in the conservation world. - Is there a value in
the admixture in tigers? That is tigers that have
an ancestry that includes inter-breeding between
different sub-species. Of course there's a value in it. It's still a tiger. Most of the tigers in
captivity are considered by friends and
colleagues to be junk, because they're hybrids
between different sub-species. And many of them are, but
I wasn't sure how many. - [Narrator] Stephen O'Brien's
team has recently designed a method to determine the
genetic makeup of big cats. - So we used this DNA
fingerprint technology that was developed to
identify the difference between sub-species of tigers, and I said if you take
one of these tigers that we don't know, is it really a hybrid? Well, what we found
was that many of them are indeed pure sub-species. They were either Bengal,
or they were Amur, or they were Sumatran, or one
of the living sub-species. I think the captive population
should not be discounted. - All right, nice. - [Narrator] The reassessment
of these generic tigers has led to another
exciting discovery. Not only are some of them
pure-bred sub-species, but they also have a
rich genetic diversity. Richer, it turns out, than
in the wild population. (tiger growling) Since their ancestors
were taken from the wild when tigers were thriving, some captive tigers have
retained many characteristics now lost in wild tigers. (tiger growling) Tiger conservationists have
been quick to point out that the sample studied
by Stephen O'Brien did not include a
significant number of backyard bred tigers. Still, he believes
that each tiger counts. - My personal
feeling about it is, we're backing up a tiger
population in the wild that is not doing very well. And to tell you the truth, I'd
rather have the animal alive in a few hundred years than
simply lose it by exterminating all the captive animals
which is one solution. Maybe that's not a
reasonable thing. I realize not everybody
agrees with that, but I really think that when
evolution creates a species as magnificent as the
tiger it only does it once, and if you lose it, it's
not gonna come back. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] It seems
that some captive tigers could play a role in the
survival of the species. But what about privately
owned American tigers? Will they be around long enough
to be part of the solution? The wild tiger population
was almost 10,000 in 1990. 20 years later there are
only about 3,000 animals left and they are vanishing
faster than ever. (dramatic music) - When I first moved into
this office 25 years ago, I had this big concrete
wall and I wondered what I wanted to put on
it and it came to me, why don't I have the
covers of magazines that are focusing
on tiger issues. It starts back here. The New Scientist. Does the Tiger Have a Future? That's what we're
talking about right now. Too Late for Tigers? Wildlife Conservation Magazine. Doomed! Cover of Time Magazine. The Last Tigers. Initially I thought they
were very interesting because it gave me a focus. But what happened was that
this message just became such a common message
it's a little bit like the sky is falling down,
the sky is falling down, and after a while no
one hears you calling. - [Narrator] World leaders
seem to be finally waking up to the dire future
facing wild tigers. In November 2010, an
international summit was held in St. Petersburg. The goal was to save the
wild tiger from extinction. (speaking in foreign language) Heads of State from the
13 tiger range countries, set a target to double
their population by 2022, and committed $127 million. But is that enough? The threats facing the Asian
big cat are many and serious. (melancholy pipe music) In August 2011, the US
Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it wanted to
reinstate a permitting process to control the breeding
of generic tigers. This would severely reduce
the number of tigers bred in captivity. But for the proponents of a
total ban on private ownership, things are not moving fast
enough on Capitol Hill. Along with private owners,
the entertainment industry is lobbying to slow down
the legislative process. - I am very annoyed that
this bill is in the status that it is. It's just up in
the air right now, because we can't, I am not going to
buckle and say it's okay to breed these animals. It's a huge problem. (whistles) - [Young Man] Come on. Yeah, she's a little fat. She getting old. - [Old Man] You
gotta maybe try... - [Narrator] But tigers have
created jobs and income. They appear in movies. They are still
popular in circuses and there's even an industry that's created a
special diet for them. In these days of
economic turmoil, a ban that would cost
American jobs is not easy for a politician to support. - To be honest, I really don't
know what the federal ban will do because like so many
of the federal regulations and the state laws, there's
gonna be exemptions carved out of a federal ban on breeding
tigers and other big cats. So the circus industry
could be exempt, entertainment could be exempt. It'll be a very long process because there's a lot
of money involved. - From the professionals
stand-point it's
a sensitive issue because of being regulated
out of the business. Well, from the owner's
stand-point it's
a sensitive issue because they're
attached to the animal and they're emotional about it. - [Narrator] Only recently,
American tigers have come under scientific
and legal scrutiny, and their fate raises
many questions. But if the wild
population is to double, animals bred in captivity
will be required for the complex process
of reintroduction. Even though conservationists
have every reason to be pessimistic about
the future of the tiger. There is still some hope. (tiger growling) - We're on the cusp
of a new revolution in tiger conservation, and that is looking
at reintroduction of
captive individuals back into spaces where they once lived. The big issue (laughing) is can captive tigers actually
go out and live and survive on their own in the
wilderness areas? The honest answer to
that is, don't know. Because it's never been done. There's some who say no,
they have to be taught how to do this and they
learn from their mothers and their mother
can't teach them if there aren't natural prey. But in fact all of these are little roadblocks. All of these can be taken
care of and surmounted. - [Narrator] In South
Africa, lions and cheetahs have been successfully
reintroduced into the wild. This has encouraged
Chinese officials. Today, South China tigers
are being prepared in Africa for their
reintroduction in China. Each generation will be
released into a larger and wilder setting. (uplifting music) They will learn how to hunt, teach their skills
to their offspring, while having less and
less contact with humans. But preparing tigers
for their release is only half of the challenge. Experts know that wild
tigers need space, and 250 kilo predators
also need prey. Preserving the ecosystems
of tiger range countries, is as crucial as preserving
the tigers themselves. That's why there are so few
of these re-wilding efforts. - We need some new ideas if
we're going to really realize the prediction of the
St. Petersburg Summit, to double tigers in the wild. One of the possibilities
is to be exploring places where we can restore tigers. - [Narrator] Central Asia, the
former range of the extinct Caspian tiger, is a vast region
with a sparse population. Countries like Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan did not participate in the St. Petersburg Summit, but they are prime candidates for bold conservation
initiatives. - It's a habitat area which
is very low in human density, which is important for
reintroduction of tigers, which has potential of
being homes for tigers, from different
parts of the world. There are conservationists
in these areas that I think, in fact I know, would
be very interested in hosting tiger reconstitution,
or reintroduction, in those regions. - [Narrator] For these
programs to work, more tigers will be needed. The fate of thousands of
American tigers is being debated by scientists, lawyers,
and politicians. So far, no one has asked
for any of these tigers to be shipped overseas. - Look at mommy. Princess. Look what she does. - [Narrator] Will the
American tiger have a chance to play a role in the
future of the species? That has yet to be determined, but one day perhaps an American
born tiger will be set free to join its wild cousins. (peppy, upbeat music) (water splashing)
