The survival of India’s iconic tiger is in a precarious state. Population numbers have collapsed from 1,00,000 at the start of the century, to 3,890 today. Around 2,226 of those tigers are in India.
Relations between man and animal have long been strained. Many tiger deaths are associated with human development. As people take up more space on the planet, we don’t leave much room for animals. When we’re not building cities, we’re cutting down forests and mining the land.
These developments force carnivorous animals like tigers into closer and closer contact with humans – often with deadly consequences.
But tigers aren’t the only animals under threat. A new study from Panthera, a conservation organisation dedicated to big cats, found that 59 percent of the world’s largest carnivores are facing extinction. Each of these creatures is threatened by poaching, human development and revenge killing.
Unless natural spaces are carved out and preserved, there is little hope that animals like the tiger will survive. Governments and people need to be committed to maintaining parks and not letting development eat away at tiger territories, environmentalists say.
And tigers need a lot of roaming space. Females usually need about 20 square kilometres of territory, while males need as much as 100 square kilometres. For the world’s remaining tigers, that means a necessary space of anything from 64,000 to 320,000 square kilomteres, which is more than twice the size of Bangladesh.
Saving tigers will also mean saving the natural spaces that people rely on for a number of ecosystem services, from cleaner air to fresh water. Without nature, humans can’t hope to build their own futures.
Video Editor : Rahul Gupta
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