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Elizabeth Hadly (Stanford) 2: Loss of Biodiversity - The Tiger: A species on the brink

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Biodiversity is the differentiating features in animals.  Loss of biodiversity in animals is the extinction or decline in a species.  In this case asian tigers.  People are destroying their habitat. This has caused them to have nowhere to reproduce and grow.   Additionally people poach tigers, using them for their fur, bones, and tusks.  There are countless laws prohibiting poaching and hunting them. In attempt to grow the tiger species.

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Tigers got poached and are going extinct at an alarming rate.  There are no tigers in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Lao. This happened within a 25 year span, all of the tigers have vanished.  This was an effect towards their habitat loss, poachers, and a decreasing number of prey for them to consume.

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45 out of the 48 counties in Asia do not have any tigers left.  Thats 95% of Asia. In desperation Asia made it illegal to poach any animals let alone tigers.  To add, they have banned international commercial trade to preserve their domain. This is one of the main factors killing tigers.  Furthermore, if their prey levels go extremely low it can lead to overconsumption to vegetation.

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Almost all tigers will be extinct by 2030, and it will be extremely rare to catch a glimpse of one. The only place able to see them would be a zoo. This is because they are very well protected there and get the nutrients they would get in their natural habitat.

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There is a huge fund to help improve management of tigers habitat, such as the "CA|TS" which is one of Asia's biggest organization to help save the tigers and reduce hurting their habitat.

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With the lunar Year of the Tiger well under way, various assessments show that only a few thousand tigers at the most are surviving in South and East Asia.

Tigers once ranged from Eastern Turkey and the Caspian Sea to the south of the Tibetan plateau eastward to Manchuria and the Sea of Okhotsk.

According to The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), tigers were also found in northern Iran, Afghanistan, the Indus Valley of Pakistan, and the islands of Java and Bali.

Today, the Swiss-based WWF says that rampant poaching and unchecked habitat destruction have shrunk the tigers' range by more than 95 percent.

At the beginning of the 20 th century, wild tigers are said to have numbered some 100,000.

The total number of wild tigers has declined to as few as 3,200, with more than half of them to be found in India.

In India, it's against the law to attempt to kill an endangered tiger except in self-defense or by the special permission granted by a wildlife protection act.

Offenders face a minimum of three years in prison unless the tiger was deemed a man-eater by a court.

Of the 13 "tiger-range" nations of the world, seven-Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam-are located in Southeast Asia.

In 2010, the governments of 13 countries where tigers still roam met for the first time in St. Petersburg. There they committed themselves to a doubling of the population of wild tigers by 2022, the Lunar New Year of the Tiger.

Debbie Banks with the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which also has offices in Washington, D.C., says criminal gangs capture wild tigers and sell their bones and pelts, which can be processed into luxury home décor items.

The bones are also sometimes used for medicinal purposes despite a lack of scientific evidence that this remedy works as claimed.

The largest markets for these items appear to be found in China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Although the health claims associated with tiger body parts are dubious, the benefits of wild tigers to their surrounding environment are widely accepted by scientists.

According to the WWF, wild tigers "play an important role in maintaining the harmony of the planet's ecosystems."

Tigers prey on "herbivores," such as cows, deer and sheep, which feed on forest vegetation. They thus help to preserve vegetation that can be consumed by humans.

The WWF also notes that tigers are "incredibly adaptable" and "can survive in vastly diverse habitats ... under extreme temperatures."

That characteristic gives some cause for optimism. The tenacity of tigers may be enough for the species to avoid extinction, if only humans stop killing them.
Dan Southerland is RFA's founding executive editor.

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Only a few thousand tigers survive in Asia in 2022

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Rampant poaching and unchecked habitat destruction have shrunk the tigers' range by more than 95 percent.

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Tigers are near extinction in the wild that they could become extinct in the next 20 years. Their decline represents a crying visible failure to save endangered species and protect healthy environment. Fewer than 3,500 wild tigers live in 13 countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam) occupying less than 7% of their historical range, a dramatic plunge from an estimated 100,000 a century ago with 40,000 tigers in India alone. Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and DPR Korea historically known to have stable populations are left with no evidence of breeding populations. The irony is that more tigers are found in captivity in United States alone (about 5,000) than in the wild! The question is therefore more crucial than ever: can we save wild tigers?

Overhunting, destruction and fragmentation of habitat have been the main causes to the fast decline of tigers. Stopping overhunting including their preys is a key role in the conservation strategies of tigers. Overall, current tiger conservation activities are not reversing the decline in tiger numbers. On November 22, 2010, the World Bank organized the Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, the most significant meeting ever held to find solutions to save one single animal! The Tiger Summit aimed to double tiger numbers in the wild by 2022, restore and reconnect tiger habitat on a large landscape level and bring illegal trafficking under control. However, the most important action to save tigers relies on the local level over large scales; the summit alone will not halt their decline. A colossal local involvement throughout various initiatives will warranty long-term success to save wild tigers. Those who are doing the daily in the field (and sometimes dirty) work to save tigers and their habitats (e.g., rangers and anti poaching units) have been underpaid and underrepresented. On the opposite, those writing documents in offices and participating in summits are highly paid! Local people are the backbone of future success and they should receive rewarding higher salaries and compensations for saving one of the most venerated animals on Earth. Based upon current population status, aggressive comprehensive conservation activities should be focused in India, Sumatra, and the Russian Far East where most tigers persist. Tiger will be seen as a test-case for whether countries and human being as a whole are really serious about saving biological diversity.

Tigers ( Panthera tigris) occur only in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia. They can be found in broadleaf mixed forest, coniferous forest, mangrove forest, and tropical grass and shrubland. Tigers need an important prey base of large ungulates such as wild pigs and deer to survive in the natural habitat. They diet also include birds, fish, rodents, insects, amphibians, and reptiles. Tigers are usually solitary with adults having their own territories. Adult female home ranges seldom overlap between each others, whereas male ranges typically overlap from 1-3 females. Tiger home ranges are small (e.g., 20 km˛) where prey is abundant, whereas regions where prey is scarce then home ranges can reach 450 km˛. Males can reach a length of 3 meters long and weight up to 180 kg. Life span ranges from 15 to 20 years in the wild. Females can give birth up to seven young; however, the average is 2-3 young. The maturity age is reached between 3 and 6 years.

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Tigers are near extinction in the wild that they could become extinct in the next 20 years. Their decline represents a crying visible failure to save endangered species and protect healthy environment.