Tomorrow the Chinese New Year begins, and the third zodiac animal is everywhere on merchandise, from accessories and cosmetics to clothing and watches, in celebrating the Year of the Tiger.
Also saluting the big cat, we recall the greatest tiger characters of all time, such as Hobbes, Rajah, Shere Khan and Tigger, to name a few.
The most intriguing tiger character is perhaps the castaway Richard Parker in Life Of Pi. The inspiration for the philosophical novel came when Yann Martel was in India, whose national animal is the Panthera tigris -- the largest member of the cat family.
However, when the Canadian author began working on Life Of Pi, it took him some time to get to the Bengal tiger. Martel initially thought of an elephant and then a rhinoceros but the problem with the latter is that the herbivore would unlikely survive 227 days at sea.
The protagonist Piscine Molitor Patel, or Pi for short, hence is accompanied by the tiger. A clerical mistake swapped its real name Thirsty with that of the hunter, and so the carnivore is called Richard Parker.
Following a shipwreck while en route from India to Canada, the teenager and the tiger are stranded on a lifeboat bobbing in the Pacific Ocean, where the circumstances bonded them. The co-existence between them can be analysed as the tiger being Pi's alter ego, whose animal instinct keeps him alive in the worst-case scenarios.
Released in 2012, the film adaptation by Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee brings the seasick or savage Richard Parker to life through computer-generated imagery as well as with some scenes featuring real tigers.
The primacy of survival is portrayed in the fictional Life Of Pi, which has an ambiguous ending.
In real life, sadly the tiger is actually the one in a survival crisis and at the brink of extinction.
Just over a century ago, 100,000 wild tigers roamed across Asia, according to the WWF website, today the number is approximately 3,900, with the largest population found in India.
The population has dramatically plummeted due to poaching, habitat loss and prey depletion. The poaching serves the illegal wildlife trade and demand for tiger skins and body parts used in traditional medicines and for decorative curios. Tigers are also killed in retaliation for attacks on livestock or people.
Last year on the occasion of International Tiger Day, which annually falls on July 29, the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) announced that Thailand has at least 177 Indochinese tigers roaming in the wild -- an increase of 17 from 2020.
However, there are two less now. Earlier this month, two tigers were slain, skinned, their meat cooked on a makeshift barbecue frame, and pelts dried at a hunting camp in Thong Pha Phum National Park in Kanchanaburi, near the Myanmar border.
While patrolling the area, park rangers spotted a plume of smoke. The hunters fled the scene and later turned themselves in to the police.
The tragic killing of the two tigers occurred in the country's Western Forest Complex -- one of the most important habitats for tigers and their reproduction in Southeast Asia.
The DNP launched the country's first tiger action plan in 2004. In the following years, increased conservation efforts include more rigorous enforcement, monitoring, and research especially at the tiger's natural habitat in western Thailand.
The goal of the Thailand Tiger Action Plan 2010-2022 is to increase the country's tiger population by 50% by the end of this year.
Thailand is also one of the 13 tiger range countries that collaborated in the Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP) 2010-2022, endorsed in the St Petersburg Declaration on Tiger Conservation at the International Tiger Forum held in Russia in November 2010.
The goal of the GTRP is to double the number of wild tigers globally by this year. The action plan includes preserving natural habitats and eradicating poaching and the illegal trade of tiger parts and derivatives.
Saving the big cat is highlighted in the Year of the Tiger, but of course, conservation requires ongoing efforts beyond 2022. Saving the top predator is more than about protecting a single species, as the tiger plays a key role in maintaining and perpetuating healthy and sustainable ecosystems for the good of the planet.
Kanokporn Chanasongkram is a feature writer for Life section of the Bangkok Post.
