International Tiger Day: Why should we protect wild tigers?

Monday marks International Tiger Day, dedicated to raising public awareness about protecting wild tigers, the largest living cat species native to Asia, and to calling on people to pay attention to the plight of endangered wild animals.

Following a sharp decline since the last century, the tiger population appears to be stable or increasing since 2015 due to conservation efforts, according to data published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in July 2022 which shows that there are about 3,726 to 5,578 wild tigers in the world.

Despite the progress, the trend of tiger natural habitats' destruction and fragmentation has not been reversed, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

An article published on China Science Communication – a website run by the China Association for Science and Technology – shows that China has about 7,116 tigers altogether, but only about 1 percent of them live in the wild.

Wild tigers are an important indicator of a healthy forest ecosystem. As a large carnivore at the top of the food chain, tigers can effectively control the population of herbivores and play an important role in the stability of the ecosystem.

Fossil records date the earliest tigers back to about 2 million years ago, mainly in the Yellow River Basin of China. After a long period of evolution, tigers have gradually fallen into nine subspecies but the number later was reduced to six as three subspecies went extinct.

Two major natural habitats of the tiger include the Russian Far East and Northeast China, and the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.

Currently, two tiger subspecies can be found in the wild in China: the Siberian tigers in northeast China and the Indochinese tigers in the southwestern province of Yunnan.

To better protect the Siberian tigers, which are under the country's first-class state protection, the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park was established in October 2021.

According to China's Forestry and Grassland Administration, the number of wild Siberian tigers in the country increased from 12 to 16 in 2000 to about 60 today after years of conservation efforts including the ban on poaching.

For more:

Wild Siberian tiger spotted in NE China national park

A female Siberian tiger makes frequent cross-border trips to China

(Cover image via CFP)