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Today is International Tiger Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness for a species on the brink of extinction. The day was founded back in 2010 at an international summit, called in response to the dramatic decline in wild tiger populations. There has been a 97%  drop over the last century, leaving only 3,000 left in the wild. This huge decline is due to habitat loss, climate change, hunting and poaching.

Researchers and conservationists are developing recovery programmes to conserve tigers and protect their natural habitats. We share with you a few F1000Prime recommended articles to highlight their efforts and the challenges they face.

Recovery Programmes

Tigers now occupy just 7% of their historical range and are confined to forested habitats intertwined with human dominated landscapes. The Global Tiger Recovery programme (PDF) aims to double the wild tiger population by 2022. Tigers are a territorial and wide-ranging species, so to achieve this recovery target, large landscape are needed where key breeding areas are connected by dispersal corridors, enabling the males to leave the place of their birth.

A study, published in PLoS ONE, by researchers from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, UK, assessed one of the premier tiger landscapes of Asia, the Terai Arc Landscape, which straddles India and Nepal. Using survey data to model the status and distribution of tigers, they provide further evidence that regional corridors are necessary to enable tigers to access available habitat to maintain demographic and genetic connectivity across sub-populations.

Competing carnivores

Unfortunately, conservationists have found that improving the situation for one species, can negatively impact other competing carnivores. Research published in the Journal of Applied Ecology documented changes in population density in tigers and leopards in Rajaji National Park, India. Following relocation of pastoral communities and their livestock, the tiger population increased, while the leopard population decreased. This was because both carnivores were competing for the same resources. The tigers outcompeted the leopards, which pushed the leopards to the outer regions of the protected area. Although this was a successful conservation strategy for tigers, is was at the expense of the leopard population, showing the difficulties in developing recovery programmes and the need to preserve several species and consider knock-on effects.

Human-wildlife conflict

Sustainable co-existence of human and animal side by side is not always harmonious and can instead result in human-wildlife conflicts, which can hamper support for conservation among local communities. In a world with burgeoning populations, a group of researchers from Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University, USA, compared fine-scale spatial and temporal patterns of human activity with the tiger population living inside and outside Nepal’s Chitwan National Park. The findings, published in PNAS, showed that humans and tigers shared and occupied the same habitat. Despite this overlap, they could peacefully co-exist because they tended to be active at different times of the day. Humans peak activity was during the day, while tigers were mainly active at night. This is a promising outcome for future conservation and recovery programmes.

Tiger numbers are on the rise, but still more work is needed to combat illegal trade, eliminate demand for tiger parts, and strengthen scientific monitoring. Hopefully, these magnificent beasts will forevermore be “Tiger Tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night.”