Tiger Numbers Dwindle

As yet unpublished research reported in the AFP has suggested that a survey of tigers in Bangladesh conducted in 2004 made a large error. By conducting a survey of paw prints it was concluded that there were about 400 individuals in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. A new survey used camera traps and is considered to be a far more accurate and reliable way of estimating the true number of tigers in the region. Unfortunately, the new number is only 106 and perhaps only as few as 83.

This is very bad news for what was already a highly threatened species. It now seems quite likely that bengal tigers will become extinct in the area in the next couple of decades. As a geneticist, it seems to me that even if something drastic happened and numbers recovered significantly they would still be in trouble. 106 simply isn't enough tigers to make a genetically successful population; they have reached a genetic bottleneck. If the estimated 3,200 tigers left worldwide were all in the same place and able to breed together then they might stand a chance, but they are split up into many very small sub-populations, geographically separated such that there doesn't exist a breeding population anywhere on the planet of more than a few hundred.

A century ago there were thought to be 100,000 tigers in the world, we have successfully wiped out more than 95% of them; there were nine subspecies of tiger extant, we've wiped out three of them. It would appear that their days in the wild are numbered but, as a species at least, they aren't in any real danger of going extinct. There are at least 5,000 tigers in the United States alone, all of them in captivity. But this throws up the question of whether or not it's appropriate to keep animals like tigers in captivity. Personally I don't think it is. I know this puts me in the minority but I would take samples, create a genetic ark and await a more enlightened time. Big cats and other large mammals in zoos do nothing but depress me. If you read the blurb on the side of an enclosure then it'll tell you that this all helps the conservation effort, but I've also seen information that seems to say that it does nothing of the kind and it is basically a marketing and merchandising scam. I assume there is an objective answer to this question somewhere, although I have no idea what it is. What does seem certain is that tigers in the wild do not have long left.

Image used under creative commons license