White Lions and Tigers

B

banham.tiger

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
Hi all I am doing a research project at the moment on using white lions and tigers in zoos.

I was wondering if you could please tell me your opinions on keeping these iconic animals in zoos.

Do you think they are good for education?

Do you think they can be used to raise funds for conservation and to attract visitors?

Thanks and I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
 
I really like the look of White Tigers. Very striking and beautiful. However, I don't like to see them at all because of the inherent genetic issues and for me they should be phased out.

White Lions I have never seen and don't know anything about their breeding backgrounds to make a reasoned comment.
 
I think many visitors like to see white tigers and lions; when I visited Bristol Zoo in 1968, the animals I most wanted to see were the okapis and white tigers. I realise that white lions and tigers have no conservation value, but then the same is the case with many popular zoo animals, such as meerkats and domestic camels. Also, there are few plans to release captive lions and tigers into the wild, so keeping these species, rather than critically endangered small cats, is done for similar reasons to keeping white lions and tigers - they are considered to be popular with visitors and make money for zoos. That is not to say that I agree with this, as I prefer to see 'unpopular' species, but several zoos that tend not to keep ABC species have financial problems.
 
No one can doubt that these cats are stunning and very popular with visitors. Paradise wildlife park has both white tigers and lions which is the parks main attractions. Without these animals I think they will have problems to bring in visitors.

Have biaza now banned white lion breeding? If so does this mean that once the lions at paradise have gone they wont be replaced?
 
It seems that there is a consensus (although not a complete one) on the forum that white tigers present an animal welfare issue and white lions do not. Often people extend this to then say it's perfectly fine for zoos to exhibit white lions. I'm not argueing against this entirely, but I do think they present some problems in terms of education. Zoos like white lions because they are marketable, however in order to market them they have to draw attention to their rarity, and therein lies the problem. As soon as you start marketing a colour form as 'rare' you are distorting or muddying a conservation message, whether the species in question is endangered or not. The most egregious example of this that I've seen was West Midlands Safari Park describing their white lions as "the most endangered animals in the world". Zoos must be very careful about compromising their educational function, because do do so can call in to question their whole raison d'etre.

You can also make a more general argument that drawing attention to attractive colour variations reinforces the idea that animals' primary purpose is to provide entertainment or some form of utility to humans. I'm not sure I completely buy that though.
 
"White" lions and tigers are useless for education and for conservation. Maybe once they were interesting oddities but now they are simply freaks kept to pull folks through the gate. If you want to exhibit them, be honest and say you are doing it for the money they (might) pull in and please don't dress it up in terms of education or conservation.
 
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