As recently as four years ago, more than a few prominent conservationists predicted that wild tigers would be extinct by the year 2000. Thankfully, we begin this century with a world still home to wild tigers. While still imperiled across their entire range, the tiger is far from extinct. Tigers still prowl forests and grasslands of the Indian subcontinent. They still hunt in the tropical jungles of Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
Tigers still raise cubs and stalk deer and wild pigs in the Russian Far East.
In a world that is increasingly more modern and more impacted by man, meaningful pockets of wildness remain, and in some of those pockets, tigers dwell. Without question, tigers face enormous threats to their survival - poaching, prey depletion, and habitat loss remain the principal culprits. Many of these people, from forest guards to acclaimed wildlife biologists, have devoted their adult lives to tiger conservation, and that devotion and their tireless efforts are incredibly important. Given adequate prey and some protection, tigers reproduce quickly and have proved themselves far more tenacious than people previously thought. To win long term success, it is important to examine the tiger's survival in the short term and determine how extend that survival across wider temporal and spatial scales.