White tiger cloning
White tiger cloning is the newest scheme being pushed by Pantnagar University in Uttarakhand alongside Russia’s Saint Petersburg State University of Veterinary Medicine. The plan leans entirely on SCNT lab tricks (a technique for cloning), which is far away from conservation. It’s simply an extension of captive breeding that zoos market as “science” while ignoring wild habitats.
Pantnagar’s vice chancellor points to a cloned cow as precedent, but white tiger cloning would manufacture more inbred anomalies for display, even more than the breeding industry produces today. It will not lead to protect ecosystems. FYI, India’s white tiger line began with a single captive animal in 1951, and decades of inbreeding followed. Mostly in the US, but now it seems Russia wants its share as well.
Supporters even price a future cub at ₹4–5 crore (US$ 500,000– US$ 600,000), revealing the real motive: spectacle and bio-commerce. Every rupee or US$ spent on white tiger cloning is a rupee or US$ diverted from habitat protection, prey recovery, corridor protection, and conflict prevention. Cloning cannot fix shrinking prey, broken corridors, or rising conflict.
Real conservation means living landscapes, not laboratory curiosities. White tiger cloning belongs in the same dustbin as circus tricks—expensive, unethical, and useless for tigers in the wild.
The white tiger cloning article:
Based on Times of India, India.
Photo via Indian media reports.
