2016-07-29 Fri

The tiger is the largest of the world’s big cats and this magnificent creature, with its distinctive orange and black stripes and beautifully marked face, has a day that is dedicated to it. The world marks 29th July as International Tigers’ Day. It is both awareness and a celebration.

With the mesmerizing striped coat of black and white and orange this majestic animal of the mild is one of its kinds. Strong muscles, long canine teeth and excellent stalking skills make this animal an ambush hunter. His distinctive stripes make a good camouflage in in the long grass or wooded forests. They also make him a beautiful animal which crave the attention of many hunters and collector.

This magnificent creature is being disappeared from the face of the earth. Tigers have lost 93% of their natural habitat due to the expansion of cities and agriculture by humans. Many factors are behind growing disappearance of the species. Not only extensive hunting the tiger population is being threatened because of climatic changes, growing deforestation, human interference in the wild and many more.

With only 3000 left alive, an initiative was taken to promote a global system for protecting the natural habitats of tigers and to raise public awareness and support for tiger conservation issues. It was founded at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in 2010. This was done because at that moment wild tigers were too close to extinction. Beside, many international organisations are involved in the day, including the WWF, the IFAW and the Smithsonian Institute.

This majestic creature has been featured on stamps and coins of many countries. India alone has not less than 5 stamps featuring royal Bengal Tiger. E.g. a 50 naya paisa stamp of 1963 features Royal Bengal Tiger where as a Rs. 1.00 stamp of 1987 features the white tiger of Rewa. Beside, Nepal also has issued a Rs. 5.00 stamp in 2010 to celebrate the year of Tiger.