Liger Breeding is Legal in United States
In certain parts of the world, breeding for the ligers is extremely restricted. There are different penalties to carry out a liger breeding program without any prior approval. Even very recently in 2010, in Taiwan the owner of the zoo, where the ligers were born was imposed the fine of more than 1000 US dollars. This might well probably be the first fine imposed on an individual for violating the breeding of the protected animals to produce ligers (The Week, 2010).
However, on the other hand, in United States, there is no restriction on breeding lions and tigers to produce ligers. Instead it is legal to do such things in United States. Several sources have even confirmed that ligers along with lions and tigers are a multi-billion dollar business in United States. Therefore, there are no legal constraints to have a liger by breeding the lion and the tiger. Just like a land of opportunity as it is well known, it gives a great degree of options to research about such breeds (Rotschild, 2010).
USA holds the biggest population of the tigers. But USA does not hold any wild tiger. Rather all of these tigers are held in captivity. There are around 20,000 of them in United States. The same is true about the captive lions in the United States as well. Therefore, with that much population, people like to have exotic animals as pets. Even such a large population of tigers and lions also does not endanger their existence, even is if they are specifically mated for the breeding programs.
Final words, breeding ligers is totally fine in USA and even to a certain extent sensible within the United States of America. The reason being they have a lot of lions and tigers in their zoos and animal sanctuaries. Maybe the Taiwanese should raise the tiger and lion population to a certain extent and then they may see rules for lion and tiger cross breeding lightening up. Ethical Issues have been on the rise by the animal rights activists about the righteousness being involved for breeding of the ligers. It is a very long debate with both proponents and opponents of liger breeders having strong points to claim.
