Several years ago, tigers were feared to be headed for extinction. Their numbers in the wild were dwindling by the year, dropping from an estimated 100,000 back in the 1900s to just about 3,000 during a tiger census in 2010.
In 2010, officials from 13 countries came together to strike a plan for a recovery. And now it seems the efforts are coming to fruition.
While there are still less than 3,500 wild tigers, the population should hit over 6,000 by 2022, if the conservation efforts continue, according to a recent study in the Science Advances journal.
“Tigers proliferate rapidly where prey and sheltered habitat are abundant,” the study states. The problem is they are loners and generally need a territory of over 11 square miles of forest.
Habitat loss, together with poaching, are the biggest threats to their survival.
Tigers live in the wild in the Indian subcontinent, the Amur River region in far eastern Russia, China, North Korea, Sumatra, Indonesia, and Continental southeast Asia.
The study monitored 76 tiger habitats over the last 14 years using satellite technology. It found that while some forests have been decimated, others are holding steady. Specifically, of the 29 most critical landscapes for tigers, 10 of them accounted for more than 98 percent of habitat loss, and the remaining 19 showed little change.
“The global population could approach a trebling in the next two decades,” the study concludes, if the conservation efforts keep going.
