ABSTRACT
Killing tigers is wrong. These words neatly summarize a broadly held consensus on a topic that appeals to increasing numbers of people, as the numbers of tigers steadily drop. In many present-day Western European countries, hunters in general have a bad reputation. In these areas, where wildlife has almost disappeared or is vanishing rapidly, the hunter is seen as an upstart who tries to imitate the gentry of former days, as a backward trigger-happy rural or even as an ecological criminal. The reputation of those who kill tigers is even worse. Such strong feelings are no doubt generated by the near certainty that tigers will become extinct if the tiger killers are not stopped. Also of influence is the popular notion that animals such as wolves, bears, lions and tigers are far less dangerous than people assumed. If these animals started to kill humans, so the argument goes, it was almost always because of human interference (for example, McDougal 1987).
