The issue with white lions in the wild is that they don’t survive well due to their coloration, and don’t usually pass on the white gene since females are actually attracted to males with darker manes (darker-maned males usually have more testosterone, and are therefore better-suited to caring for a pride).

People who believe that white lions are a subspecies are greatly mistaken. This is not the case. As with white tigers, they are considered to be ‘genetic aberrations’ by conservation groups and zoologists worldwide.

White lions which are released into reserves will eventually die out due to lioness’ attraction to males with darker manes, and will be displaced by stronger, normally-pigmented males.

Unfortunately, claims of white tigers being unrelated to the original breeding founder (Mohan, mentioned above) are completely unfounded. I have even emailed the directer of Dreamworld Australia’s Tiger Island, mentioned in the wikipedia article you are referring to. He denies all claims that their tigers are not inbred, and (reluctantly) admits that they indeed are.

What you have to consider is the fact that zoos were not required to keep studbook information until the 1980s. No known carriers of the white gene had occurred anywhere in captivity outside of Mohan’s bloodline during the years prior to that point. But since zoos wee not required to keep track of which tigers in which zoos mated with who, it became very difficult for conservationists to track which tigers had good, non-inbred genetics.

For this very reason, no Begal Tigers from the United States are allowed to participate in the Species Survival Plan. Almost all of them are suspected to be in some way related to each other, but it’s nearly impossible to tell without DNA testing. Of course, testing every tiger in the US would be impossibly expensive and therefore impractical.

Whoever wrote the information on Wikipedia was probably mistaken into thinking that only white tigers could produce white offspring, which would naturally make them believe that an orange tiger mating with a white tiger to produce white offspring would not be inbreeding. But any captive carrier of the white gene is already the product of inbreeding. So there is still a high chance that the resulting offspring will suffer and die.

Add that to breeding with normal orange tigers that also have part of the white tiger genetic make up…

Read sections :-

Tony, Bagheera, and Frosty: A new strain

and especially

The Orissa strain

No bengal.. only Amur..

As well as the comments “Strabismus is associated with white tigers of mixed Bengal/Siberian ancestry. Strabismus is directly linked to a gene and is not a separate consequence of inbreeding”

Any thoughts?

On the note of zoos, I do believe that many stand for a good cause. If they have conservation in mind, though, they will not breed white tigers or other abnormal animals like ligers and such. Such practice has no place in modern animal care.

also not all zoos are bad i have been to several zoos my fave been chester zoo because the animals are not over crouded and they are well looked after

In captivity, the only way for two copies of the white gene to meet is through repeated inbreeding. Not all offspring will be white, though, even if the parents were inbred. Some of the litter may be golden tabby or normal orange. Breeders will often display these cats and say “We’re not inbreeding! See? That tiger is not white or golden tabby; he’s orange!”
The fact is, said orange tiger only received one copy of the white gene instead of two, and can still be bred with a another already-inbred tiger to produce more abnormally-colored cubs. The issue with this, of course, is that since all white tigers come from one single cat (named Mohan) who was inbred to his own offspring, there is no possible way for inbreeding to NOT occur.

Eventually all tigers will live in zoos. What is the point of that? We don’t need to keep the population thriving in captivity, we need to change the conditions we’ve created in the wild.