Tigers are ferocious beasts. And most of the folktales portray them as such. But no tale, folk or otherwise paints them as greedy creatures.

Like the rest of us, I too have read or heard many folktales, both from home and abroad. You must be wondering why I'm talking of folktales? The reason is two small pieces of news. But we will come to them later.

Tigers indeed are killing machines. They hunt everything, from deer and wild buffalo to rabbits and wild boar. They stop at nothing, and with good reason they are at the top of the food chain. Only humans are higher.

But unlike humans, they don't kill for fun, leisure or profit. In fact, they don't kill, but hunt. And they do that to feed themselves and their cubs the same reason we slaughter cows, pigs, lambs, chickens and ducks.

We, too, began hunting animals for food (or to defend ourselves). But as our arsenal developed, we began killing for trophies. That mayhem continued for millenniums, right up to the mid-20th century when we began to realize that animals were more important to us than we were to them.

Let's get back to folktales. I remember, quite vaguely, reading one about a father and his son. Both were ace hunters. One day, a tiger catches them by surprise in the forest. It pounces on the father, grabs him in its jaws and dashes off. Soon the son regains his senses and takes aim to shoot the tiger. The father, though staring death in the face (literally), tells his son to aim for the tiger's legs, saying: "I don't want you to damage his coat."

We humans are the only creatures in the animal kingdom with the gift of reason. And only we can use reason in such an absurd fashion, especially when we are possessed by greed. As this folktale illustrates, we are even ready to die for our avarice.

Before you brand me a misanthrope, let me tell you I think all is not lost.

The first news item, "Yunnan may have no Bengal tigers left," left me shocked and saddened. But the second, "Residents brave the cold to save Siberian tigers," reminded me of Portia in "Merchant of Venice": "That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

The big cats have not been seen in the wild in Yunnan for decades, raising fears that they have either migrated to neighbouring countries or have been killed by poachers. People have been urged to conserve the habitat of the tiger to lure them back to the southwestern province.

Let's hope they do so. But more than that, let's hope the poachers not the ones who actually kill the animals, but those who run the multibillion-dollar worldwide racket will see sense. The riches gathered today, for posterity, for their progenies, will have no meaning if this world we know today is no longer there to savour.

Concerned residents of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province have signed up as volunteers for a Wildlife Conservation Society campaign to save the Siberian, or Amur, tigers. These big cats face the greatest threat from illegal traps laid by poachers in winter. Twenty volunteers will be chosen to work in temperatures as low as -30 C to find and remove the traps.

It's heartening to see the other side of humans, the side that protects and conserves. The destroyers among us have already killed the Caspian, Java and Bali tigers to extinction. It's only because of people like the valiant Heilongjiang residents that the other five subspecies the Bengal, Siberian, Sumatran, Indo-Chinese and South China tigers can still be seen in the wild.

Otherwise, William Blake's tiger would no longer be "burning bright in the forests of the night."

Three cheers for the selfless fighters.

(China Daily 12/08/2006 page4)