Ruth Carruthers: Tiger trouble
Perhaps Shaun White should recognise the tiger's plight before thinking that having them caged at parties is cool?
Shaun White commands a lot of respect, thanks to his seemingly superhuman ability on a snowboard, his invention of the Tomahawk (Double McTwist 1260) and just this weekend, his silver medal in the Skateboard Vert at the X Games. But recently, I’ve lost quite a bit of respect for this Flying Tomato. Why? Because he should consider the impact of the words that come out of his mouth a little bit more.
It was one night last week when flicking through channels that I came across the Spike Guys’ Choice Awards, and my opinion of White plummeted. If, like me, you’ve never heard of this event, the Guys’ Choice Awards is Spike TV’s celeb-soaked LA awards ceremony that honours all things manly like ‘kicking ass’ and ogling ‘babes’. At this one, they had live tigers pacing around in a tiny tank. I presume these are supposed to symbolise the power of a man or some crap like that.
Anyway, the Tomato was up for the Chairman of The Board award, which he accepted whilst yelling, “This has got to be the best place on earth! There’s live tigers, rock ‘n’ roll and beautiful girls.” Live tigers, eh? Well, that’s great. From the fierce look on those tigers’ faces though, I don’t think they were too happy to be there.
As I pointed out in an article for HUCK#20, according to the WWF, there are more captive tigers in the state of Texas right now than there are left in the wild. A recent estimate puts the number of tigers left in the wild at less than 3,200. But what’s the problem you might ask? Indeed, whether you think keeping healthy wild animals in captivity is cruel or not depends on your own personal opinion.
I can’t comment on the living conditions of the tigers that were featured on the awards show because I haven’t seen them and I don’t know if they suffer any form of physical abuse, but what does worry me is how captivity affects these tigers mentally.
In the wild, tigers rule over extensive territories with rivers to swim in, food to chase and trees to climb. I’d like to ask Shaun White how he would feel if someone told him that he had to put down his various boards forever, stop roaming the world in search of powder and spend the rest of his life in a cage or a giant fish tank under hot lights with a fake halfpipe behind him and performing tricks to a crowd of overpaid actors? It would be enough to send him crazy I’ll bet.
White’s official website says he’s “one of the most recognizable [sic] sports figures of his time.” For many kids, if someone like Shaun White says something’s cool, it’s cool. So the last thing tigers need is some international sports personality endorsing the entertainment value of their captivity.
To make matters worse, Leonardo DiCaprio was up for an award too, and didn’t say a word about the tigers, even though he’s the face of WWF’s Save Tigers Now campaign. I don’t know what’s worse: White saying he thought the captive tigers were cool or DiCaprio saying nothing about them at all.
As far as I’m concerned, captive tigers are a very old-fashioned status symbol. In order to help raise awareness of this endangered species, those with influence like White or DiCaprio need to speak up about their plight, not mindlessly celebrate their appearance at a party.
If they did, I’d respect that.
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Tiger trouble (text) by Ruth Carruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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