Notes from a rare planet: Tiger cubs are not appropriate carry-on items for airplanes

This picture of a tiger cub comes courtesy of Flickr user Picture Taker 2.

“A Thai woman has been detained by airport authorities in Bangkok after they found a drugged tiger cub stashed in her luggage alongside a stuffed toy. According to wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic, the tiger cub was found in an overweight suitcase en route to Iran, another sign that Illegal tiger trade is growing despite dwindling numbers for the endangered species. The woman carrying the suitcase was fined $1200 and The 3 month old cub was sent on to a wildlife conservation centre in Bangkok.”

“Destruction and fragmentation of habitat, poaching and lack of prey have reduced the number of wild Amur tigers.”

“According to preliminary data from Brazilian NGO Imazon and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is down 16% over the past twelve months, with 1,488 square kilometers (574 square miles) of forest cleared. All that tree felling resulted in 95.6 million metric tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere, Mongabay reports, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of Greece.”
“To put those stats in perspective, even though deforestation is declining an area of forest about 1.2 times the city of Los Angeles or New York is still be entirely cleared annually, not to mention that forest degradation (land not fully cleared but still seriously disturbed) over the same period was similar in 2009-2010 as it was in the previous year.”

“New study finds that the average male driver drives 276 miles lost every year. That’s a big carbon footprint for time badly spent!”

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