PERC Execuitve DIrector Terry Anderson recommended eating wild tigers as the best way to save them during an appearance on ABC’s "20/20" with John Stossel. Viewers responded promptly with more than 400 comments, many of them cries of outrage.
International bans on the trade of rare animal parts (tiger organs, elephant tusks, rhino horns) have not saved endangered species. Why? Because wherever there is a demand strong enough, market forces overwhelm law enforcement. Anderson claims that governments have repeatedly failed when they tried to save animals by banning their sale — it failed with the Colobus monkey in West Africa … with the alligator in China … and now, with the tiger in Asia.
If people could own species such as tigers, farm them, and sell , they would be no more endangered than cattle or chickens, according to Anderson. It may not be palatable to some, but less so is the extinction of many increasingly rare wild animals.