A Species Under Threat

big cat big threat!!

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the world’s largest cat and is one of the most threatened with extinction. As recently as 100 years ago, there were as many as 100,000 wild tigers living in Asia. Today, fewer than 3,200 remain.
Six subspecies of tigers continue to persist, but three have gone extinct in the last 80 years.
The existing subspecies are the Bengal, Indochinese, Sumatran, Amur, Malayan, and the South-China subspecies (although no signs of the South-China subspecies have been recorded in the wild in the last 10 years).
The three extinct subspecies include the Javan (last recorded in the 1970's), Caspian (lost in the 1950's) and the Bali subspecies (lost in the 1930's).
Wild tigers are still found in 13 countries in Asia: India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia (Sumatra), Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam, China and Russia. However, they are extinct in 11 countries and no longer live in 93% of their historic range.
Tigers are currently listed as “Endangered” on the International Union of the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

The primary threats facing tigers are:

• Wild tigers are being directly hunted to meet the demands of the illegal wildlife trade market. Tiger parts are consumed for traditional medicinal purposes across Asia, with a heavy demand in China. The international illegal trade in wildlife products is a booming business, and is estimated to yield more than $6 billion a year.
• Not only are tigers hunted, but their wild prey, like deer and wild pigs, have been overhunted by people either for subsistence or for sale.  A depleted prey base means that tigers will often attack livestock to feed themselves and their cubs, thus fueling human-tiger conflict.
• Due to an increasing human population, humans and tigers are living in close proximity in many places across their range, which far too often results in human-tiger conflict situations. Wild tigers are frequently persecuted when villagers take retaliatory measures to protect their livestock.
• Tigers need intact habitat in order to survive but their habitat is increasingly under threat and either being destroyed or fragmented from agricultural developments, especially large monocultures like palm oil plantations.