The Tiger

The Siberian tiger is also called the Amur tiger. There is an interesting article on the China Daily website about a forest ranger, An Jianwu, who works in the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces. Interestingly, Google Maps does not identify this huge park very well or at all.  Siberian tiger. Image in public domain. Photo above : In April 2021 this Siberian Tiger was spotted in China in the far north east of that country where it was eventually tranquilized with darts and is DNA analysed and the stripes also analysed to check whether it had wandered over from Russia. It weighed 200 kg and it was a male. People were astonished to see it wander down a village. It is up in the north of China and it appears to cross into Russia. A study describes the park as an area of "cross-border, cross-province, cross-region and cross-ownership. Its stakeholders are diversified.". There's been enhanced conservation of the Siberian tiger in...

In 1996 Dr Desmond Morris's book Cat World was published. Okay, that is 16 years ago and the stresses on tiger conservation since then have mounted because the four reasons for the fall in tiger populations listed below are still present and getting worse. Bengal tiger cooling off in water. Photo: Pixabay. Tigers are great swimmers. In 1996 the human population of Asia had more than doubled since 1950 to 3,000 million. It will be double that in another 30 years. The 'living space for the tigers is vanishing year by year'. Yes, it is a simple matter of space. Tigers need lots of it: hundreds of square miles (male: up to 300 square kilometres). Secondly he writes that sport hunting still exists. I disagree with this because nowadays when tigers are shot they are not shot for the entertainment factor, they are shot dead for their body parts which are very valuable in Chinese medicine. Yes, there is still some illegal trophy hunting of the tiger but sport hunting is scarce ...

Here are two images which provide us with a tiger count for 2014 and the distribution of the tiger at the same date. It seems to me that the IUCN Red List's data stops at 2014. I have found this with other cat species. What is happening? A lot can change over 7 years. A hell of a lot in fact. The IUCN Red List needs to update its information annually at the very least. Am I missing the point or something? No idea. World tiger count at 2014 is 4,240 according to the guys who should know: IUCN Red List. This is a screenshot from their PDF file. I have taken a liberty in lifting these images from their PDF files but I do so for educational purposes. I was surprised that they came up with the number of 4,240 tigers left in the wild on the planet. That is more than I had thought. How accurate is their information? It is certainly out of date and it is an estimate. Can't trust it I am afraid. This information should be treated as guidelines only. Where was the tiger found in the w...

At April 2016, they (the experts 1 ) say that there are an estimated 3,890 in the wild 3 on planet earth but note the word "estimated 2 " and note that the number will change from month to month and year to year. The change is usually downwards because the tiger is endangered due to human activities. They say the tiger population is bouncing back . I say there is a lot of political pressure to talk up tiger numbers. The pressure from human activities (poaching, loss of habitat etc.) is greater than the desire to talk up numbers. The long term prognosis is poor unless there is a radically different approach to humankind's relationship with all wild species. This change must come from the default desire for perpetual economic growth which invariable means diminishing tiger numbers. Business takes away tiger habitat - bye bye tiger. Business beats conservation. Economic growth = less wild life on the planet. There is no denying that simple formula. And we must not for...

The newspapers tell us that the tiger is starting to bounce back as nations fight the illegal trade in tiger body parts. They say that after more than a century of unrelenting bad news for tigers and the tiger population in the wild, the species is finally beginning to recover from the brink of extinction. Big words. Big ideas. The message is hopeful and optimistic but is it justified? The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) compiled tiger population numbers from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) data and recent tiger surveys by some countries. They are confident about their figures. However, they are estimates. Counting tigers is difficult. In the past there has been a lot of missed counts and poor estimates. Also, I don't rate the IUCN. For me, they are asleep on the job. The WWF are confident that the actual number of wild tigers has risen since 2010 but they are unable to say by how much. That is not going to give us confidence that they have ...

Anecdotal evidence suggests or claims that there are around 5,000 tigers in captivity in Texas, USA. If that were true there would be far more tigers in Texas than there are in the wild in the rest of the world. It is something that is constantly recited on the internet. Is it true? Well we don't know for sure it seems because there is no requirement for individual people who keep a tiger or tigers in captivity as a sort of pet to register the tiger and facility with the authorities if the tiger is a "generic" tiger. Generic means a tiger of no specific subspecies. In other words a hybrid tiger. Lots of tigers even those managed by specialist people and so called experts are hybrid or generic tigers. However, we do know the number of tigers that are in USDA licensed facilities (USDA is the United States Department of Agriculture) in Texas. Lynn Culver the executive director of the Feline Conservation Federation requested numbers from the USDA-APHIS office under the ...

Counting tigers is notoriously difficult, in part because they are very secretive. They need to be to survive the activities of people. "Subjective judgments" have to be made. When you do that self serving interests can get in the way of making good judgments! The tiger count in India was overestimated at one time and it came as a shock when the figure was revised downward. It is almost possible to image the scenario whereby the tiger becomes extinct in the wild without people knowing about it. In the old days counting tigers was carried out by pug marks and scats. "Pug marks" are the footprint of an animal. The word "pug" means "foot" in Hindi. "Scats" are fecal droppings. Camera traps are also used. These are cameras mounted on trees, rocks and such objects which fire off when a tiger passes in front of it. The positioning of the camera has to be assessed accurately and with wisdom. Both camera traps and radio collars are relia...

Here's a table showing world tiger populations at the date of this post: Please note that counting the number of wildcats, whatever the species or subspecies, has in the past been notoriously unrealiable. The process is better managed now, probably because of the increased use of camera traps (cameras that fire off on movement in front of the camera). But there is still political interference I would argue. However, these figures, as you can see go back to 2004 at best. That is 7 years ago and quite a lot can happen in 7 years in respect of tiger populations particularly in relation to the tigers in south Asia where habitat (forest) is being consistently eroded for commercial reasons. Human population size and growth is still high in India and Bangladesh. The Siberian tiger population is stable but fertility is poor amongst the tigers resulting in an effective population in the far east of Russia, in terms of reproduction, of 14 individuals .

These are Bengal tiger population figures for the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve and adjacent area in West Bengal, the South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. This is a map of South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India: View Larger Map And this is a map of the Sunderbans, a large mangrove swamp and one of the largest Bengal tiger reserves: View Larger Map You can see and read more about the Indian Bengal tiger reserves if you wish.