Nearly two hundred tigers roam the lowland forests of Nepal, according to a new survey. This is a 63 percent increase in the country’s tiger population since 2009, and rare good news for global efforts to save the tiger from extinction.
The survey counted 198 Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) across five parks and three wildlife corridors in Nepal. Tiger number were up everywhere, but in Bardia National Park the population went from just 18 individuals in 2009 to 50 today (an increase of 277 percent). Still, tigers have a ways to go in Nepal before really recovering: in 2000 there were an estimated 360-370 tigers in the country.
At a Tiger Summit in 2010, all 13 tiger range countries pledged to double global tiger numbers by 2022. The first-ever of its kind summit raised $300 million for tiger conservation efforts.
Scientists estimate that only around 3,000 tigers survive in the wild today, a 95 percent drop from their population at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Tigers have been decimated by habitat destruction, prey decline, and poaching for skins and traditional medicine.
Tigers are the world’s largest cat, with Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) the biggest of all. Today, six subspecies of tiger survive. Three have gone extinct in the last century alone and one of the remaining subspecies, South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), may be extinct in the wild.
Bengal tiger in Rantgambhore National Park. Photo by: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Creative Commons 3.0.
Related articles
Zoos call on governments to take urgent action against illegal wildlife trade (photos)
(07/24/2013) In a single night in March, a band of heavily-armed, horse-riding poachers slaughtered 89 elephants in southern Chad, thirty of which were pregnant females. The carnage was the worst poaching incident of the year, but even this slaughter paled in comparison to the 300 elephants killed in a Cameroon park in 2012. Elephant poaching is hitting new records as experts say some 30,000 elephants are being killed every year for their ivory tusks. But the illegal wildlife trade—estimated at $19 billion—is not just decimating elephants, but also rhinos, big cats, great apes, and thousands of lesser-known species like pangolins and slow lorises. This growing carnage recently led to representatives of over 40 zoos and dozens of wildlife programs to call on governments around the world to take immediate action on long-neglected wildlife crime.
How tigers are faring in their final frontier
(07/15/2013) “Gone are the tiger-filled days when Corbett, as a small boy wandering the jungles of Nepal in the 1880s, peeped over a plum bush that heaved as a tiger walked out on the far side.” Adele Conover, in the Smithsonian magazine. Even as recently as the 1930s, 40,000 tigers roamed the forests of India. By the 1970s, tiger number had plummeted to less than 2,000. Historically, the tiger ranged from the Caspian Sea to the Russian Far North to the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. Now, they occupy just 7% of this historical range, with India home to over half of the tigers remaining in the wild. And what a world they inhabit.
5 men rescued, 1 killed, after 5-day Sumatran tiger standoff
(07/12/2013) Five men were finally rescued on Monday after spending five days trapped in a tree by a group of Sumatran tigers. A team of around 30 people rescued the men after several tiger tamers were able to lure the animals away using chants and mantras. The men were attacked inside Aceh’s Gunung Leuser National Park by a mother tiger after accidentally killing its cub in a trap the group had set to hunt deer. The tiger killed one of the men, 28-year-old David, and forced the others to escape up a tree.
Sumatran tiger density lower than previously thought
(06/28/2013) The critically endangered Sumatran tiger may be even rarer than previously thought, reports a study published in the journal Oryx.
Local people provide wildlife and forest data in park plagued by conflict
(06/24/2013) There are often many obstacles for scientists when gauging wildlife decline and forest loss, and one of the most difficult is civil conflict, like the situation in the Similipal Tiger Reserve in India. But a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science (TCS) finds that local communities may be used to gauge forest loss and wildlife decline for baseline data when conflicts or other obstacle prevent long-term research and monitoring.
Tigers, orangutans, rhinos: Sumatra’s big mammals on the edge of extinction
(06/12/2013) Karman Lubis’s body was found near where he had been working on a Sumatran rubber plantation. His head was found several days later a mile away and they still haven’t found his right hand. He had been mauled by a Sumatran tiger that has been living in Batang Gadis National Park and he was one of five people killed there by tigers in the last five years.
Snowy tigers and giant owls: conservation against the odds in Russia’s Far East
-WCS-Russia.150.jpg)
(05/28/2013) The Russian Far East is one of the wildest places on Earth: where giant tigers roam snow-covered forests and the world’s biggest owls stalk frozen rivers. Bordering northern China and North Korea, the forests of Primorye are known for the diversity of habitats, including coastal forests along the Sea of Japan, vast coniferous forests in the Sikhote-Alin mountains, and even steppe. These diverse ecosystems also makes the forests a hotspot for endangered species, including Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica), Blakiston’s fish owls (Bubo blakistoni), and one of the world’s rarest big cats, Amur leopards (Panthera pardus orientalis), which number only 30-50 animals.