Armondai Brown

English 102

Dr. Spearman

12 December 2010

Will the Tigers Survive?

In a world full of big cats, there is one that’s stands above them all. The tiger is the

biggest big cat in the world. Weighting anywhere from 450 to 700 pounds, and being able to run

at speeds up to 45 miles per hour the tiger is even more deadly, and fierce then the lion. Sadly

even being one of the powerful mammals doesn’t save them from being driven towards

extinction. In the year 2000 there was an estimated 23,000 living in the world. Now within ten

years there numbers have dropped to less than 4,553. Why are their numbers dropping like this?

The answer to this question is a very simple one, the reason they are dying is because of people.

A big reason that these beautiful animals are going extinct is pray depletion. The average

tiger consumes at a minimum of fifty pounds a day. According to journalist Jennifer Copley that

wouldn’t normally be a problem if there was only one tiger in the area. She then goes on to state

that “with food depletion, tigers are forced into other tigers territory looking for food, which in

turn depletes food even further.” Another problem pointed out in the journal is the people living

in the area that the tigers call home. The people that live here are hunting the same animals that

is the tigers pray, which decreasing the pray in the areas to a critical level. A big number of

theses tigers are die from starvation because of the people in the area hunting the tiger’s food.

Over the course of the past 100 years the different species of tigers has been getting

smaller and smaller by the decade. At one time there were eight different species of times in the
world, all thriving. Now there are five species lift because of human interference, and there

numbers grow smaller by the day. The White Bangle tiger is the rarest and most rarely seen tiger

of all. For that reason alone the white bangle tiger is the most critically endangered. Because of

its white fur and the fact that it is a rare species it was hunted nearly to extinction. There are no

white bangle tigers in the wild today. There are in fact only four of these beautiful creatures left,

and they are in captivity. Two owned by Sick Freed and Roy, in Los Vegas, and the other two

are at an endangered animal facility in California.

Following up behind the White Bangle tiger, is the better known Bangle tiger. The

Bangle tiger is the largest of the tigers and is the biggest cat in the world, at full adulthood

weighing 800 pounds and 14 feet long there are few animals that can stand before it. Sadly their

numbers are only in the one thousands, because of poaching. Thanks to the massive size the fur,

teeth, and claws are worth much more than most of the other species of tigers. Luckily these tiger

are very dangerous and only the bravest of hunters would attempt to take on such prey. Most

hunters still won’t pursue the giants because it is well known that in some occasions one shot

won’t be enough to take the tiger down, and in most cases with tigers all you get is one shoot.

The south china tiger is the smallest of all the tiger subspecies, and it is the second most

critically endangered. Not very much is known about their exact numbers in the wild, but some

estimates would put the number at under 20 tigers. According to the site others say that there

aren’t any more. The reality is that no south china tiger has been seen in the wild for the last 20

years.

The next closest to extinction of the remaining tiger subspecies is the Siberian tiger. One

of the biggest of the species of the tiger, they can way up to 700 pounds and, are 13 feet long.
Most Siberian tigers are commonly poached for their fur and for their body parts used in

Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is estimated that in 1991 alone, one-third of the Siberian tiger

population was killed to meet the demand for their bones and other parts used in this practice.

This even though the practice is now unlawful in China, it is still a highly done practice.

Following the Siberian, the next closes to being extinct is the Sumatra tiger. It is

estimated that only between 500-600 Sumatran tigers remain in the wild. And their population is

dwindling rapidly. In 1978 a tiger census reported around 1,000 Sumatran tigers still in the wild.

This means over the last 25 years, the population of Sumatran tigers has been cut in half, now

there closer to extinction than ever.

These are just a few of the types of tigers that are either close to, or are extinct because of

human interference. If the world keeps on the path that it’s on there won’t be any tigers left. With

all that was already said there are still more ways that humans are killing off the tigers

population. Two big ways that humans are effecting the tiger population is by hunting, and

poaching. Poachers hunt down and kill the tiger not because of the meet, but for their fur, teeth,

and claws, which the make profit from on the illegal markets of the world. They also sell these

parts to black market doctors so they can practice practices that have been outlawed for almost

twenty years. Using the tiger’s claws and teeth has been being taken for hundreds of years for the

medical uses. These traditions are a huge reason that the tigers numbers have dwindled so far

down Worst then the poacher; the hunters just kill these animals just to kill them. These hunters

kill hundreds of tiger a year, just so that can have a trophy; such as the tiger head, or fur mounted

on their wall. Sometimes they even have the tiger stuffed, and placed in the hunter trophy room,

as a reminder of the animal they killed for what is called sport. Even though laws have been
placed to make hunting of the tiger’s illegal, hunters still kill these animals without remorse, or

knowledge that they are killing off one of the world’s magnificent creatures.

Along with these other reasons, habitat destruction is rite up at the top of the list for why

tigers are going extinct. The government builds cuts down the forests and woods these animals

live in and it cause them to have to relocate or die. In addition to that, tigers are shot on site by

the workers in the forest in fear of an attack. The cutting down of the forest also takes the homes

of the animals the tigers eat leading to starvation. Tigers are also being killed off by the farmers

who build their houses in the tiger’s territory. This leads to more than one problem. One of these

problems is the farmer’s livestock. When you destroy the tigers pray sources they will eat

whatever they can including goats and sheep. This cause’s trouble because these farmers need

their livestock to survive and will do anything to protect it; including shooting the tigers. The

other problem is that the farmers also have to go into the wood in order to get wood and other

resources, and in doing so are risking being attacked by a tiger. The tiger can be killed in the

attack, or if they kill someone, the tiger will be hunted down and killed. Specking that they can’t

tell one tiger from another one, the farmers will kill any and every tiger that is found until they

get tired of looking. One tiger attack can lead to the death of ten to fifteen tigers being killed in

retaliation. Many people including myself blame the government for these accidents for the

simple reason that if they wouldn’t build on the tiger’s territory you wouldn’t have as many tiger

attacks, and you wouldn’t too many cases of tiger killing livestock and farmers killing tiger in

retaliation. And if the government wouldn’t cut down the forest, tiger wouldn’t end up in areas

that have big human population and that alone would cut the tiger attack, and death rate in half,

and that would save hundreds of tiger’s lives a year.

 Even though human are the biggest reason that the tigers of the world are going extinct,

people all over the world are getting involved in the preservation of these beautiful animal before

it is to late and there is none left.