The Campaign to Save India’s Tigers Ignores the Human Cost of Conservation

Saving South Asia’s Regal Cats Has Plunged Thousands of Women Into Poverty and Ignominy

Tigers are for most of us a hypothetical necessity.

Hypothetical in the sense that very few of us spend any time around tigers outside of zoos, though we interact with images of tigers on a daily basis, depending on what type of cereal we eat, sports team we root for, or comic strip we read.

Necessities in the sense that most of us would agree that the world really, really needs tigers; that tigers must remain lurking in the jungle, with their stripes rippling under the dappled light. The existence …