Tigers are endangered primarily due to a combination of human-driven factors. The main reasons include:
- Poaching and illegal wildlife trade: Tigers are hunted for their pelts, bones, teeth, and claws, which are sold on the black market. Tiger parts are mistakenly believed to have medicinal properties or used as status symbols, leading to high poaching pressure even in protected areas.
- Habitat loss and fragmentation: Rapid human population growth drives deforestation for agriculture, palm oil plantations, logging, infrastructure development, and settlements. About 95% of tigers' historical range has been lost. Habitat fragmentation isolates populations, making them vulnerable to inbreeding, poaching, and conflicts.
- Human-wildlife conflict: As tigers' natural habitat shrinks, they come into closer contact with humans, sometimes preying on livestock which leads to retaliatory killings by people.
- Climate change: Rising temperatures and rising sea levels (e.g., affecting the Sundarbans mangrove forests) disrupt tiger habitats and prey availability.
- Inbreeding and genetic diversity loss: Isolated and fragmented tiger populations suffer from reduced genetic diversity, increasing disease vulnerability and reducing adaptive capacity.
- Prey depletion: Overhunting of prey species reduces food availability.
- Infrastructure development: Roads, dams, mines, and other projects degrade tiger habitats and increase access for poachers.
- Lack of effective conservation enforcement: Despite laws protecting tigers, enforcement is often weak, allowing illegal activities to continue.
- Political instability: In some tiger range countries, conflict hampers conservation efforts and enforcement.
These combined threats have brought tigers to the brink of extinction, with efforts ongoing to protect habitats, combat poaching, and support population recovery.
