India’s Endangered Tigers

According to Peter Jackson of the Cat Specialist Group, not only is India’s Tiger population endangered; conservation efforts are endangered as well.

Since 1972, the tiger population in India has dropped from 1,827 to just 1,411, despite a US$80million conservation effort called Project Tiger. Tigers are regularly slaughtered in India due to the belief in China that their bones provide medicinal benefits. This has led to widespread poaching, with many tigers murdered even on wildlife reserves. One reserve lost more than half of its tigers to these poachers. In 1994, India’s government finally succumbed to pressure and established a Wildlife Crime Bureau; however, this organization was not put into action until 2007.

India’s sparse tiger population is now scattered among a handful of reserves, many of which are home to fewer than 50 tigers. In addition to the threat posed by poachers, India’s rising population has increased pressure to cut down forests, the tiger’s habitat, to make room for agriculture and mining. If current trends continue, the Indian tiger will become extinct.

For more information on efforts to save the Indian tiger, visit the Indian Tiger Welfare Society. This website also provides photos and information on tigers and other wild cats throughout the world. To help save the Indian tiger and other endangered wildlife in India, donations can be made to the Wildlife Protection Society of India. This site also contains a list of e-mails, phone numbers and snail mail addresses for influential political leaders in India that people may contact to express their support for conservation efforts.

For more information on endangered wild cats, see Helping Endangered Wild Cats, The Endangered Scottish Wildcat and Wild Cats of Canada.