The Indonesian government is considering a conservation initiative that could see the general public legally keeping tigers as pets, CNN’s Arwa Damon reports.

For a $100,000 deposit ordinary citizens would be allowed to care for a pair of critically endangered Sumatran tigers in their own backyard. That is as long as it’s at least one tenth the size of a baseball field.

The government says that it is basing this initiative on a similar one that they launched for the Balinese mynah bird — about the size of a pigeon — that was on the brink of extinction.

The government says that the tigers and their cubs will still remain property of the state and will be closely monitored.

But the World Wildlife Fund and other NGOs warn that “adopting” tigers is not the way to save the big cats from extinction.

“Putting tigers into an area that small is not the answer to long term conservation,” says Dian Kosasih of WWF Indonesia. “The WWF has always believed that conserving species in the wild is what we have to pursue.”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Big cats, Conservation, Mammals, Pets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.