Threats to the tiger population have been on the rise in recent years, especially due to rapid urbanisation and population growth in countries such as India and China, where the surviving tigers are becoming increasingly more threatened.
In fact, the Indian population has risen by 50% over the last 20 years, whilst China’s population has also doubled over the last 40, with 99% of its original forest habitat having been destroyed in the process. These population
pressures have seen an increase in ‘tiger-human conflict’, where both compete for the same resources- the land being the most important of these. Indonesia, for example, home to the Sumatran tiger, balances the same population of the US on almost 10% of the land area, leaving close to all of Indonesia’s lowland forest to be cleared for rice cultivation.
The need for more land has therefore led to increased deforestation and clearing (by burning), which has killed tigers in the process, whilst forcing those that survive into smaller and smaller habitats. The new land is most commonly used for farming crops or livestock, and protective or frightened farmers will often turn to shooting or snaring tigers to keep them off the land.