Fretting About the Last of the World’s Biggest Cats

Could this Chinese Year of the Tiger be the last one with actual tigers still afoot in the world’s wild?

The numbers are not encouraging. Experts believe the global wild tiger population has fallen to below 3,000 — less than 3 percent of what it was just 100 years ago. Today, their range has been reduced to small patches, isolating many of the animals in genetically impoverished groups of dozens of cats or fewer.

In India, some famous tiger reserves have no tigers left at all.

The new Year of the Tiger, which began last month, will be a year of talking about the tiger, and urgently so. Thailand hosted a meeting of concerned Asian nations last month. This week a major conference — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — begins in Qatar, where tigers will be a marquee topic. A “summit” planned for Vladivostok, in September, will be hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia and the president of the World Bank.

Mr. Putin has taken an especially active interest in the Amur sub-species, also known as the Siberian tiger, the largest of all the big cats, with males weighing up to 800 pounds and growing to lengths of 12 feet. Visitors to his Web site can track the movements of a female he collared with a transmitting device in 2008.  Read Article

By Bill Marsh