false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173404189m/283501.jpg 283501 5 Indigenous to Asia, and once widely distributed across the continent, the tiger is yet another of the world's creatures to come perilously close to extinction in the last century. Where a hundred years ago the population of <I>Panthera tigris</I> and its cousins stood at more than 100,000, a 1995 census put the total at less than 5,000. And, writes Peter Matthiessen, a longtime student and champion of endangered wildlife, "most biologists and conservationists ... would set that number even lower."<p> Working with the noted wildlife biologist and photographer Maurice Hornocker, Matthiessen recounts his travels into the Russian Far East and Manchuria in search of one of the rarest of the big cats, <I>Panthera tigris altaica</I>, the Siberian tiger. Once shielded, and not by design, by Communist policies that restricted travel in and development of its wilderness habitat, the Siberian tiger is increasingly threatened throughout much of its range as the dense old-growth forests of the Pacific seaboard fall to Japanese logging companies; at the same time, the tiger is still hunted for parts used by Chinese apothecaries (drinking the essence of a tiger is thought to bring renewed sexual vigor to aging men). Matthiessen, whose text brims with a righteous rage on the tiger's behalf, is able to report a few success stories, as Russian, Chinese, and American biologists work to conserve habitat in the wild country memorialized by V.K. Arseniev's <I>Dersu the Trapper</I>, a memoir that informs Matthiessen's own book. But his book is also full of tragedy, of terrible stories that help press a case for why the Siberian tiger should be protected everywhere in its domain.<p> Matching a thoughtful, well-crafted text with remarkable photographs of tigers in the wild, this is a book that, with luck, will help spur renewed interest in making the world safe for wildlife of all kinds. <I>--Gregory McNamee</I> 275028 2000 Tigers in the Snow total:43|5:10|4:19|3:14|2:0|1:0| 43 168 73 4 5 0 false false Tue Jul 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 11 17:27:47 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 11:40:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Jan 22 17:33:54 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 17:37:52 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Tue Dec 25 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Mar 10 12:45:46 -0700 2008 Sat Dec 06 11:04:08 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 11 11:43:09 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 17 11:35:03 -0700 2007
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