Year for the Tiger - its significance 

For centuries, tigers have played an important role in the world's religions and cultures. At least 5,000 years ago, the Indus people in what is now Pakistan used tigers on their signatory seals. Elsewhere on the Indian sub-continent, the Hindu religion portrays the god Siva sitting on a tiger skin while the supreme goddess, Durga, rides a tiger. The Warli tribes of north Mumbai worship the tiger god Vaghadeva for its
powers over fertility, marriage and pregnancy and regard Vaghadeva as the greatest of all gods. And in the Buddhist temples of Bhutan, China, Thailand and Tibet, beautiful murals depicting the tiger can be seen. 

More recently, South Korea chose the tiger as the symbol of the 1988 Olympic Games and Malaysia uses two tigers to support its national crest. The perceived power of the tiger has led to the terms "Asian tigers" and "tiger economies" to describe the economies of South-east Asia for their dynamic growth during the 1970s, '80s and early '90s. 

In western society, tigers have been immortalised in literature - not least in the celebrated poem by William Blake: 

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Today, images of tigers are used in advertising to sell any number of products from breakfast cereals to petrol. In sport, many teams have the tiger as their club emblem or nickname - for example, Britain's Leicester Rugby Football Club and in the United States, the Detroit Tigers baseball team. 

In Chinese culture, every 12th year is dedicated to the tiger and as part of the new year celebrations, tiger markings are painted on children's foreheads to promote vigour and health. Someone born in the Year of the Tiger is thought to be powerful, passionate, daring, rebellious, colourful and unpredictable: a fortunate person to have around with a contagious, impulsive and vivacious nature. 

The most important feature of tiger people - and one that is needed by real tigers - is that no matter how bad things become, they never say die and always appear to re-light the fire of life. Never before has the tiger needed this quality
to such an extent as now, when it approaches the new millennium with an uncertain future. 

In the last 100 years, tiger populations have declined by 95  per cent due to a combination of factors: habitat loss, trophy hunting, pest control, and the increased use of tiger bone-based medicines. This has resulted in the extinction of three sub-species: the Bali, Caspian and Javan. Three more - the South China, Amur and Sumatran - are in danger of the
same fate, and populations of the Indo-Chinese and Bengal tiger are declining rapidly. The situation is serious - tigers are disappearing fast.