It is interesting to see someone advocate for keeping tiger farmers in check only to keep priceless, $10 tigers in the wild. Sure, wild tigers are probably priceless. But the logical extension to this argument is that farmed tigers are essentially worthless. Given the claim of there being only ~50 tigers in the wild in China, the $10 dollar “cost” is severely inadequate. You have to also consider the intangible costs that are associated with this - like finding one of the 50 or so tigers in China. Last time I looked, China wasn’t a 3 hour drive in rush hour traffic.

While the claim that it is cheaper to get a poached tiger may be true in the monetary sense, it lacks any sense in practical application. If farmed tigers are so expensive to raise, the general costs associated with raising the tiger will be factored into the selling price. If farmers can expand, they can both increase the population of tigers in existence (and not just the wild), they can drive down the costs associated with raising a tiger to an extent.

Did you stop to think just why there are farmed tigers? If it is so easy and cheap to obtain a tiger from the wild, there would be no need for a farmer. In other words, the farmers exist because after factoring in costs, they can profit from their action. This implies that buyers consider the cost of paying for a farmed tiger is less than that of a wild tiger.

The reality is that the farmed tigers are preventing the killing of the “fewer than 50″ tigers in China. If you don’t believe me, look at it this way:

You know why mice are so cheap to buy in a store? Aside from there being plenty of them and stable breeding, it’s far easier for me to buy a mouse in the store to feed to a snake than it is to find a mouse in a field, capture it, and then feed it to the snake. The natural value of a mouse is very low in stores primarily because they can easily be farmed. Imagine if we put the kibash on mouse farming and instead require any mouse be captured, legally, from a field. The value of the mouse will skyrocket as people will need to compete with both nature and each other to feed pets and make pets of them. This in part will either lead to illegal breeding of mice, or poaching of mice.

I know I’m mincing words here and it may not be all that clear. But my final point is this: is it better to have farmed tigers with a few in the wild or no tigers at all? It is either one or the other and the LA Times editorial simply missed the entire point.