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.
The last remaining tigers are now also facing the threat of illegal hunters and poachers, as urban growth and settlements encroach on forests and habitats. Here, some living in relatively poor conditions rely on hunting the tigers to sell their skins on illegal markets, or their bones for use in traditional medicines. Worse still, in some areas, local people are now hunting the same prey tigers do, though human hunters clearly have the upper hand. A lack of prey means a lack of food, leaving some tigers (especially cubs) to starve, and others to stalk more ambitious prey, including humans.
In total, tigers have lost almost 93% of their original territory, and the current habitats have become ‘fragmented’, whereby tiger communities are left isolated from each other due to human developments appearing randomly throughout forests, scattering the tigers between them. These smaller, more ‘concentrated’ tiger populations lead to a higher risk of inbreeding (which can result in genetic complications, leaving the cubs unlikely to survive), and again increasing the risk of hunters and poachers, who can more easily track and find the tigers in these smaller environments.
"Tigers have lost 93% of their territory"
Climate change also poses a major threat to tiger populations, the largest of which is found in the Sundarbans- a mangrove forest on the northern coast of the Indian Ocean. Here, the land is home to the Bengal tigers, a region protected by the mangrove forest, which buffers incoming waves from storm surges and winds from cyclones.
The predicted effects of global warming include a major increase in the number of natural hazards, especially in vulnerable areas such as India, the Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh. Rising sea levels also threaten to flood these coastal forests, with sea