May, 1999

In an effort to save the remaining tigers in India, the Indian conservation group Tiger Trust (TT) has begun to work to help the tigers in India's Kanha and Bandhavgarh tiger reserves.

Currently, India's tiger population is being seriously threatened by poaching and territory loss.  Many traditional medicine markets require tigers, and the growing population of people and cattle in India are taking over land that had been formerly occupied by tigers.

An Indian Tiger.  Image Credit: Project Tiger, Government of India. Hear a tiger growl.

Though there were once as many as 150,000 tigers in the world, there are now only about 4,000-5,000.  Of the original eight species of tigers, only three are still in existence.

Today, there are about 2,500 of the Indian Royal Bengal tigers left.  There are also 1,000 Indo-Chinese tigers, 300 Siberian tigers, 300 Sumatran tigers and 20 South China tigers.

As a result, the Indian tigers seem to be the most likely to survive in the future.  However, it will even be difficult for them, and their chance of survival might be quite low.

Every day, one Indian tiger dies.  If this rate of death is allowed to continue, all species of tigers throughout the world will be extinct by 2010.

To prevent this scenario, the Save-the-Tiger Campaign and Project Tiger have successfully created tiger reserves and convinced the Indian government to ban tiger hunting.  In the longer term, the groups hope to educate the Indian people about the threat of the extinction of the tigers so that they can help to ensure the tiger's survival.

Save the Tigers

The Indian government's Project Tiger