THE Malaysian sports fraternity is caught in a comical furore over the design of the official uniform that our athletes will wear at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games next month.
Critics, at least the ones trolling on social media, have panned its design, which was inspired by the Malayan tiger's yellow and black motifs, but it was rebuffed by the Olympic Council of Malaysia.
For the Olympics' opening ceremony on July 26, another, as yet undisclosed, design would be later unveiled for the fashion police to marvel or malign at.
The assessment seems frivolous on two counts: the hissy fit drowned the more important aspects of our Olympians' medal prospects and, crucially, the object of inspiration: panthera tigris jacksoni is on the cusp of extinction.
Malayan tigers are being poached and hounded out of their habitat due to deforestation, but worst of all, insipid protection due to bureaucratic lethargy.
Yet, these magnificent beasts command reverence: the national football team adopting the name "Harimau Malaya", the Malay warriors' code of courage and strength, and towering portraitures in movies, songs and literature.
National veneration, it seems, has failed to guarantee the tigers' survival. Unconvincing in its responsibility to protect and conserve these animals, the best the government could muster was provide some grim statistics.
Some 490 offenders have been caught peddling tiger body parts in seizures valued at over RM258 million between 2019 and April this year.
Malayan tigers are considered endangered while rhetoric for their protection is a mouthful.
Still, it hasn't shielded them from being prized for its bones, meat, skin, whiskers and paws, filleted by a US$216 billion global black market that has annihilated their number by 50 per cent since 2014.
The rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia used to be a haven for 3,000 tigers in the post-war era.
Now, that figure has trickled to a mere 150 animals, 60 of them roaming safely in Taman Negara.
The wildlife's loss of natural habitat is distressing. Politicians keep carving virgin terrain for industrialisation, agriculture, housing and logging profits, threatened animals be damned.
Traditional medicine halls sell dubious elixirs that are made using tiger body parts to treat ailments and diseases. Some humans find the tiger appetising as a delicacy and aphrodisiac.
For as long as this insane culinary obsession persists, there is no chance that any wildlife can outsmart their most lethal foe — humans.
Soon, our children will have only pictures as proof that Malayan tigers once roamed our jungles.
When that happens, the mascots and symbols in our Olympic contingent, national football team and even the government's coat of arms may have to be replaced out of irrelevance.
With the ongoing poaching, habitat destruction, the climate crisis and apathy, it's hard to say what other exotic mammal the tiger will be replaced with.
But the bigger question is, what wildlife can survive this violent and hopeless future?
