John Varty & Tiger Canyon

[Pckts]

@peter, I am going to debate this in a respectful manner but it is a debate, so hopefully both sides are appreciated and respected?
Please note that I am being respectful and will make sure to separate fact from interpretation:

My statements on Varty do not come out of know where, I am well studied on Jon Varty.
Varty brought this idea to the indian gov't first. Before Tiger Canyons doc was ever created, he was denied for the fact that all of his tigers where hybrids.


Here are a few of the questions and answers hes provided, I then will put my Opinion below. Its only my opinion, like what I stated before.

SM: What is your overall objective?
JV: To get a population of over 50 wild Tigers and create a park where Lions, Leopards, Cheetah and Tigers all coexist.

My Opinion: What purpose does this serve?
Tigers can never live with lions in a small segragated enclosure, let a lone leopards and Cheetah. None of these animals will be used for reintroduction to the wild, so why exactly would he want this?

SM: Do you ever see Cheetah and Tiger co-existing?
JV: I would need a lot more land, more than 60 000 Hectares.

My Opinion: For what purpose?



SM: What does it cost you to run Tiger Canyons per day?
JV: I have no idea, a lot of money.

My Opinion: Leaves it open so he can continue to get private fundingSM: Can I sponsor a Tiger?
JV: Yes you can, through the Tigress Julie Foundation.SM: Have you had any big corporations sponsor a Tiger?
JV: No, only individuals.

SM: Does the South African Government give you any support?
JV: None. I have called for the government to create a full national park for Tigers, but I doubt it will ever happen.

My opinion: So if he will get no gov't help, he can't release any of these hybrids to their natural habbitat what is he looking for?

SM: What would it cost me to rename Ussuri?
JV: $100 000

SM: What will it cost to name one of her cubs?
JV: $10 000

SM: How strong is your tourism?
JV: Very strong. The Big Cat Safari puts Lion, Leopard, Cheetah and Tiger together in one safari. There is nowhere else in the world you can achieve this. 52 Nationalities have visited Tiger Canyons.

SM: What kind of return can an investor get from an investment in wild Tigers?
JV: A small financial return - a bigger environmental return and an even greater spiritual return.

SM: What is the spiritual return?
JV: I get to swim with tiger cubs, go hunting with Cheetah, film and photograph wild tigers in an area with no noise, no pollution and no crime. That’s a pretty spiritual lifestyle.

My opion: It's about Tourism and Money. He says investors will get a "spiritual return" yet when asked what it is, he strictly speaks of himself getting the return.
He is unaware of what it costs to run his facility but to change the name of a Tiger adult its 100k or 10k for a cub.

In response to this
"If Varthy would have been that interested in money, he would have bought some large zoo tigers and circus drop-outs"
Its not that easy to buy zoo animals and circus dropouts. They cost money, but its not just them, its the need to house them, feed them and most importantly you need land and permits to do it. He doesn't possess the means to do so so he seeks contributions, creating a documentory off false hopes to increase financial gain is wrong to me. I am not the only person who shares this idea about varty, I will post a list below on some issues Conservationist have.

Please note this is not me speaking, simply posting the issues they raise

 John Varty The Tiger Man of AfricaThe very notion of breeding ligers in Africa for conservation is only slightly more ridiculous than breeding tigers in Africa.  No legitimate scientist or conservationist would condone anything that John Varty is doing with his inbred population of tigers.Quotes from real expertsus Mills, head of South Africa’s Endangered Wildlife Trust Carnivore Conservation Group:“The big concern I have over the project … is they are planning to release into the wild a species that is exotic, that doesn’t occur in that ecosystem. And I think as a basic principle in conservation, we should only conserve animals that are indigenous to the area. … “From a principle basis it is just wrong to set aside a large area and conserve it with an exotic species. Why don’t you also then bring in kangaroos and some bears and you could have a real nice mix that … some people might think is attractive? But certainly from a conservation point of view it doesn’t have any value. Because conservation is really about conserving animals in their natural ecosystem.John Seidensticker, chairman of the Save The Tiger Fund Council, and senior scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C.:“I’ve heard many justifications with this project … (but) the conservation community is pretty much opposed to this. It’s diverting funds that could be used otherwise.  “Our definition of conservation is securing a place for wild tigers where they live, not a place in Texas or South Africa. There are a lot of people who spent their lives, sometimes at great risk of themselves, to work on (tiger conservation). It is going to be a story, this whole thing, about how to not do conservation.” Carole Baskin, Founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue the world’s largest accredited sanctuary dedicated entirely to exotic cats:“The very first show called The Tiger Man of Africa has him boasting about the birth of a white cub, which is only produced through severe inbreeding.  To introduce inbred and cross bred tigers into a non native habitat only does harm.  The problem that tigers face in the wild has nothing to do with their ability to breed.  They breed like rabbits.  The problem is habitat.The lion is currently a candidate for the endangered species list as well and again, it isn’t because they aren’t good at reproduction.  It is because there is no where that they can be lions without the constant threat of poachers.  Much of the lion and tiger killing that goes on in the wild is because the animal has been blamed for killing livestock.  Using hand reared cats for his rewilding experiment just makes it even more likely that the cats will get into trouble if they escape his property.  That just endangers the cats he has brought there and any native cats in the area.  Only Dave Salmoni does more harm to big cats by teaching them to walk among humans.”
 About John VartyJohn Varty (JV) is a controversial South African filmmaker. JV established Tiger Canyons near the town of Philippolis on the Van der Kloof Lake in the Karoo of South Africa as an experiment to supposed create a free-ranging, self-sustaining hybrid tiger population outside Asia. However experts feel that this is a money making venture by Varty in an attempt to earn money from the tourism industry. This was documented in a film called “Living with Tigers”.The Tiger Canyons ProjectHowever there are controversies to his proposed conservation strategy. One criticism about the project is with the chosen cubs. Experts state that the four tigers (Ron, Julie, Seatao and Shadow) involved in the re-wilding project are not purebred Bengal tigers, and should therefore not be used for breeding. The four tigers are not recorded in the Bengal tiger Studbook and should not be deemed as purebred Bengal tigers. Many tigers in the world’s zoos are genetically impure, a situation which also applies to these four.The 1997 International Tiger Studbook lists the current global captive population of Bengal tigers at 210 tigers. All of the studbook-registered captive population is maintained in Indian zoos, except for one female Bengal tiger in North America. It has been pointed out that Ron and Julie (two of the tigers) were bred in the USA and hand-raised at Bowmanville Zoo in Canada, while Seatow and Shadow are two tigers bred in South Africa.The tigers in the Tiger Canyons Project have recently been confirmed to be crossbred Siberian/Bengal tigers. Tigers that are not genetically pure are not allowed to be released into the wild and will not be able to participate in the tiger Species Survival Plan, which aims to breed genetically pure tiger specimens and individuals.  It has thus been claimed that these tigers do not have any genetic value, and that their release into the wild could result in genetic pollution, besides the extinction of purebred Tigers.
Discovery Documentary FraudThe documentary has been described as a fraud.  The tigers were apparently unable to hunt, and the film crew chased the prey up against the fence and into the path of the tigers for the sake of dramatic footage. Cory Meacham, a US-based environmental journalist mentioned that “the film has about as much to do with tiger conservation as a Disney cartoon.”

Li and Stuart now believe that from the start the Vartys’ agenda in the South China Tiger project was primarily to make a movie.

Stuart: ‘We talked about how sexy it would be if this was a project to save the most endangered tiger in the world and that this would be a very sellable story. They explained to me that selling a film is all about selling a story. And they didn’t have an ending to their story. And they said they needed to know what the ending would be. If the ending was saving the South China tiger, then suddenly they have a very sellable story.’

Li and Stuart now believe that from the start the Vartys’ agenda in the South China Tiger project was primarily to make a movie.



http://911animalabuse.com/john-varty-the...of-africa/


I have also read from a few posters who are on this very forum that Varty also allows hunters to tranq his tigers for a fee.
I have NO proof of it so I didn't use it as reason. But I believe one of the people who reported it was @Gaute, If I am wrong, I will quickly remove it and apologize for misquoting.





In addition, the tigers have not been released as the film suggests — and indeed still reside in a small enclosure under constant watch and with frequent human contact. The Discovery documentary contains footage that its maker, John Varty, has admitted on affidavit to be false.There are claims that Tiger Canyons’ Tigers have no conservation value, and experts question JV’s intention of building Tiger Canyons as a ecotourism industry in South Africa. Most experts concluded that it is just a money-minded venture which allows money to be earned through the deception that the tigers there are purebred, but in fact they have no conservation value as they are of mixed ancestry. Conservationists fear that the public will be misled in this cynical fashion.Paper Tigers: South AfricaTo millions of South African viewers they became household names – controversial wildlife filmmaker, John Varty and his wife, television celebrity, Gillian van Houten. The camera portrayed them as the idyllic bush couple, working together to attempt to return orphaned animals to the wild.The little lion cub Shingilana, Jamu the leopard … it all made for great television.In 1999 John began his most controversial production: filming the rehabilitation into the wild of two zoo-bred Bengal tigers. The story would end with their release into a reserve in the Karoo."
 The agreement was pretty straightforward – Stuart Bray entrusted $4-million to the Vartys to buy land, fence it and stock it with game.Dave Varty, Eco-tourism Developer: ‘Broadly speaking, he would provide funding, we would provide intellectual capital, expertise, etc. We would assemble the land, get the model, the economics of the model going, which included lodges, included rehabilitation of tigers, etc. etc.’So Stuart set up and guaranteed a credit facility in South Africa in the Vartys’ name. They were authorised to use this R35-million loan to set up the sanctuary. And it was up to the Vartys to rehabilitate the Chinese tigers and get them back to the reserve in China. In return they would reap the commercial benefits from filmmaking and lodges.





I understand that my intial remark seems harsh but it goes off interpretation of facts, so while I admit to being more judgemental than scientific in that first statement, I apologize. But I did use examples that generating money is not always in the best interest of conservation or the animals in question. 
 

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