WORLD TIGER POPULATIONS
DROP TO A CRITICAL LOW

EMBARGOED: For release 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3, 1997

	WASHINGTON—When the 20th century began,
the world had an estimated 100,000 tigers. As the
century comes to a close, as few as 5,000 to 7,000
are thought to survive in the wild.
	The numbers of tigers have dropped so low that
the animal is in immediate need of major human
intervention to survive, a comprehensive article 
in the December National Geographic magazine
reports.
	Extended field research and documentation 
by author Geoffrey C. Ward and photographer Michael
“Nick” Nichols have shown that despite some
progress in preserving the species, the future of the
tiger remains perilous. The tiger can be saved, Ward 
writes, “provided governments intensify their 
efforts to protect them, good science is applied to
their conservation, and well-meaning alarmists don’t
convince the public that their rescue is a lost cause.”
	In much of their territory, tigers are losing a battle
with people for places to live or food to eat, and they 
continue to be poached so their parts can be put into 
traditional Chinese medicines.
	Nichols spent more than a year on the assignment, 
photographing tigers in seven countries and enjoying unusual
access to the parks in India where tigers live. He shot
much of the story from atop an elephant. 
	“The most critical problem for tigers that I saw 
was the loss of habitat and unavailability of food for tigers
in many of their traditional home areas,” Nichols said. 
	Found in Asia only, more than half of the world’s 
wild tigers are thought to live in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Three tiger subspecies—the Caspian, Bali and Javan 
tigers—are believed to have become extinct since the 
1940s, and the South China tiger, hunted as vermin during the 
Mao Zedong era, seems poised to follow. The four other 
surviving subspecies—Bengal, Indochinese, Sumatran and 
Siberian—are all endangered. 
	Using satellite imagery, the World Wildlife Fund and the 
Wildlife Conservation Society have plotted 159 tiger conservation 
units, patchworks of forest where tigers may have a fighting 
chance; 25 of these areas are the highest priorities for 
international support. “A tiger in Siberia behaves 
differently from one in the subtropical grasslands of Nepal,”
said scientist Ginette Hemley of the World Wildlife Fund. 
“Effective tiger conservation involves protecting them in 
distinct bioregions, ecosystems and habitat types.”
	When Ward first wrote about the tigers of India in the 
early 1980s, their future, he says, seemed assured. Shooting 
them had been banned in India since 1970. 
	Project Tiger, initiated by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi 
in 1973, had set aside nine national parks for special protection.
The plan seemed to be working. Officials announced in 1984 that 
the number of tigers had more than doubled. 
	But the death of Mrs. Gandhi later that year meant the 
loss of the tiger’s chief protector. Human populations rose, 
and promised safe corridors were converted to farmers’ fields, 
inundated by dams, and honeycombed with coal mines. There were fewer 
and fewer places to which young tigers could disperse and more and 
more conflicts between tigers and people. 
	Then tigers began to disappear. It was discovered they were 
being poisoned, shot and snared so their bones could be smuggled 
out of India to supply manufacturers of Chinese medicines.
	In Indochina, tigers remain in six countries—Cambodia, 
Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. The most serious 
threat to tigers in Indochina is competition with people for food. 
Tigers need meat—lots of it—just to stay alive. The deer 
that have been their staple have disappeared from many of the forests.
“If the tiger is to survive in Indochina, governments will have 
to act fast,” said Alan Rabinowitz of the Wildlife Conservation
Society. 
	Commerce in tiger parts flourishes. Although all range countries 
in Indochina except Laos have signed the CITES agreement barring 
international trade in endangered species, enforcement in this region 
is a major challenge. Tiger parts are sold openly. 
	Some of the news is encouraging. A recent survey in Indonesia 
indicated as many as 500 tigers may be scattered in reserves across 
Sumatra. For the Siberian tiger, a frequent victim of poaching, a crash 
conservation strategy apparently has turned around a rapid decline;  
a survey turned up 430 to 470 adults and cubs, nearly twice as many 
animals as previous estimates.
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Meredith Mansfield			Sarah Clark
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