I had to find out more about this tiger park. Reportedly the park, near a famous section of the Great Wall in a county north of central Beijing, has had serious safety problems before. In March, a park employee was killed by an elephant. A security guard who stepped out of a patrol vehicle was killed by a tiger in 2014. In 2009, an 18-year-old man was killed by a tiger in the park after he scaled a fence with two friends to enter the animals’ enclosure. The men had apparently been trying to take a shortcut through the park after a hike along the Great Wall, reported Xinhua, a state-run news agency.
Who in the world would want to work at Wildlife World? It sounds like suicide. It has been reported that the number of wild tigers in China has dropped to fewer than two-dozen living in the far northeast, where they cross back and forth into Russia; thousands of tigers are raised in parks around the country. Visitors to parks in cities like Harbin can pay to feed them, sometimes with live animals. “Oh no that is absolutely crazy.” Critics say such breeding programs do little to help wild populations and are sometimes used as cover for the illegal trade in animal parts, like tiger pelts and wine made from their bones. “Now have you ever heard of that? Wine from tiger bones. Oh my.” When I went to Animal Kingdom in Disney I felt safe; I think there was a ravine between the animals and us. If you go to anything like Animal World read the signs and stay in the car.
(Email the columnist at debbienorrell@aol.com)
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