Common Name: Tiger
Scientific Name: Panthera tigris
Status: Endangered (IUCN Red List)
Description & Special Features: At the turn of the last century there were eight subspecies of tiger, numbering approximately 100,000. Today 5,000 - 7,000 animals remain in the wild and three kinds are now extinct.
Numbers Remaining:
The Royal Bengal Tiger: panthera tigris tigris 3,500 plus
The Indo-Chinese Tiger: panthera tigris corbetti 1,200
The Siberian Tiger: panthera tigris altaica 400 plus
The South China Tiger: panthera tigris amoyensis 40-50
The Sumatran Tiger: panthera tigris sumatrae 400
The Caspian Tiger: panthera tigris virgata (EXTINCT)
The Javan Tiger: panthera tigris sondaica (EXTINCT)
The Bali Tiger: panthera tigris balica (EXTINCT)
Tigers are the largest and heaviest cats in the world. Although different subspecies of tiger have different characteristics, in general male tigers weigh between 200 and 320 kg (440 lb and 700 lb) and females between 120 and 181 kg (265 lb and 400 lb). At an average, males are between 2.6 and 3.3 metres (8 feet 6 inches to 10 feet 8 inch) in length, and females are between 2.3 and 2.75 metres (7 ft 6 in and 9 ft) in length. Of the living subspecies, Sumatran tigers are the smallest, and Amur or Siberian Tigers are the largest.
Most tigers have orange coats, a fair (whitish) medial and ventral area and stripes that vary from brown or hay to pure black. The white tiger has far fewer apparent stripes. White tigers, however, are not a separate sub-species; they are leucistic Indian tigers. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies, but most tigers have in excess of 100 stripes. The now-extinct Javan tiger may have had far more than this. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people. This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. It seems likely that the function of stripes is camouflage, serving to hide these animals from their prey. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved.
Range & Habitat: The tiger has existed for over two million years, thriving in a variety of habitats in Asia, from snow-covered mountains to evergreen woodlands, from rain forests to coastal swamps. The geographic distribution of the tiger once extended across Asia from eastern Turkey to the Sea of Okhotsk. However, its range has been greatly reduced in recent times. Currently tigers survive only in scattered populations from Bangladesh west to Myanmar, and in Sumatra, China, and the Russian Far East. The largest national population is found in India.
Diet: Tigers are carnivors superpreditors. Tigers hunt alone and eat primarily medium to large sized herbivores such as sambar deer, wild pigs, gaur, and water buffalo. However, they also take smaller prey on occasion.
Threats: There are many long-term threats facing the tiger. Deforestation, population growth, agriculture and development projects are all impacting on the tigers' habitat.
However, poaching for skins used as trophies and rugs, and consumer demand for tiger body parts used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is widely considered to be the most immediate threat to the survival of the tiger.
Trade in Body Parts
All international trade in the four remaining subspecies of tiger was banned in 1975, with trade in the Siberian sub-species banned in 1987.
However, illegal trade continues and consumers continue to buy tiger parts. Tiger bone is used in traditional Asian medicine to treat ailments such as rheumatism. Tiger penis is believed to treat impotency and demands high prices as an 'exotic' food. The tigers striking skin is also highly coveted by those who enjoy the site of this magnificent beast reduced to a rug on their living room floor.
Increased demand for tiger products triggered by increased wealth in Asia has resulted in the growth of a complex underground network of traders and dealers who are directly responsible for the decimation of this magnificent animal. While prices of products containing tiger parts have rocketed, tiger numbers have fallen to fewer than 7,000 in the wild.
Consumers
Consuming countries range from South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. At least 27 million items claiming to contain tiger parts were reported as having been traded internationally between 1990 and 1992.
Asian communities all over the world are also responsible for consuming large numbers tiger products. Recent reports revealed that 50% of traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies surveyed in the United States offered products from tiger, leopard and rhino for sale.
India
India is home to over half of the world's tigers. In the early 1970s, India's tiger population was on the brink of extinction. In 1972, the government formed Project Tiger to protect the country's tiger forests and initiated a ban on shooting any of the country's remaining 1,800 tigers.
Funds flowed in from all over the world and by 1989 the number of tigers in India had climbed to 4,300. Today this figure stands at less than 3,000, and conservationists have reason to worry once again.
International opinion feels that India is not valuing the tiger outside showcase reserves and that poaching patrols lack access to guns and vehicles and, in some cases, had not been paid for 21 months.
Poaching continues to supply sophisticated smuggled routes to Asia. Some illegal wildlife dealers caught in India have been able to bribe corrupt local officials in order to escape prison. In 1994, police seized a shipment being exported, which contained the bones of 42 tigers.
More recently, in Ghaziabad, east of New Delhi, and Khaga, near Allahabad, police recovered 120 leopards, seven tiger skins, 185kg of tiger bones, more than 100 tiger claws and 18,000 leopard claws.
Increased pressures on tiger forests as a result of rural developments such as the construction of mammoth dams in pockets of the country are destroying the natural habitats of tigers. Although trafficking in wildlife products is banned in India, poaching of tigers for their skin, bones and body parts used in Chinese medicine has intensified the problem.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests says 19 percent of India's landmass is forested, of which nearly half is degraded by intensive farming, livestock grazing and forest fires. It has formulated a National Forestry Action Programme, which aims to see 33 percent of India forested in 20 years. While Project Tiger has succeeded in protecting about 26 of India's forest reserves, it is the non-protected areas of forest that are most at risk.
Another factor responsible for the fall in India's tiger population is the rise of insurgency in some parts of the country such as the Northeast and the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
Left-wing extremists from Andhra Pradesh known as Naxalites have provoked villagers to kill tigers because the government was slow in paying villagers for cattle killed by tigers.
The Wildlife Protection Society of India estimates that at least 440 tigers have been killed in India in the past six years and believes that in many cases the bodies were sent abroad for use in Chinese medicine. It was found that after 1990, when the tiger numbers began to fall again, tigers were being killed for their body parts for use in traditional Chinese medicines. Seeing an end to such poaching can be difficult, because unlike the past when only tiger skins and trophies were being sold, today all the parts of a tiger are being smuggled out of the country.
Mr PK Sen, the Director of Project Tiger believes that at least two tigers are lost from populations in India every day due to a combination of poaching, habitat loss, prey decline, revenge kills, and road kills.
Southeast Asia
Tigers continue to be poached from the small populations surviving in Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. Their skins and skeletons are offered for sale to foreign businessmen and tourists in the cities. These are then smuggled out primarily to China, Taiwan and South Korea. Investigators have found that a fifth of Sumatra's tigers, once thought to number 500 had been killed in two years.
Alternatives
Tiger bone alternatives include a variety of herbal remedies and modern medicines.
Sources & Further Information:
IUCN Red List www.redlist.org
www.wikipedia.org
What You Can Do:
NEVER BUY TIGER PRODUCTS
>Tell your friends and relatives not to buy tiger products. Their purchases will lead to the killing of more tigers and their possible extinction.
>If you see tiger products on sale it is imperative you inform the authorities. Warn any other potential buyers that they risk fines and jail if they are caught.
>Help to raise money to support conservation projects.
>Use your vote. Write to your Government representatives asking them to do more to protect endangered species.
