Tigers endangered

At the turn of the century there were an estimated 100,000 wild tigers across the forests of Asia. Today, there are somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 left.

One hundred years ago, tigers ranged through much of Asia. Killed by hunters and driven from their habitat by farmers and timber cutters, their numbers have decreased rapidly. Though they are protected as an endangered species, tigers are still shot for sport and for the skins. They are poached for their bones, claws, whiskers, and other body parts. In some part of Asia, tonics derived from tiger parts are believed to increase longevity, strength, and courage.

Tiger bones are valuable on the black market, because they are believed to contain medicinal powers, although there is no scientific proof of their benefit. You can catch great views of this usually invisible animal on National Geographic Channel. (National Geographic Society as a whole has supported tiger conservation through the Tiger Foundation, through its committee for research and exploration which awards research grants, as well as through its television programs, channels, web sites and educational initiatives.)

All tigers belong to the same species. Panthera tigris. There were originally eight tiger subspecies: Bengal, Siberian, South China, Indochinese, Sumatran, Javan, Bali, and Caspian. Three are already extinct: Javan, Bali and Caspian. One of them, the South China tiger, with perhaps less than 20 left, is on the brink of extinction.

The remaining subspecies are: Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), Chinese tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica)), and Sumatran (Panthera tigris sumatrae).

India’s Bengal tiger population fell some 95 percent between 1930, when the nation may have been home to 40,000 tigers, and 1972 when there were fewer than 2,000. Thanks to protection measures and tiger reserves, India’s tiger population now appears to range somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000. Still the tiger’s chances for survival in the wild are precarious. Without effective long-term protection, tigers could disappear from their natural habitat in the next decade.

There are approximately twice as many tigers in captivity than in the wild. There are more than 5,000 in the USA alone.