- Date: January 25, 2011 - In This Story: Asian tiger reserves
can support more than 10,000 wild tigers—three times the current
estimate—if they are managed as large-scale landscapes that
protect core breeding sites and benefit local communities,
according to the world’s leading conservation scientists in a
new study published on January 25. This positive news reveals
that doubling the number of tigers in the wild is feasible. “In
the midst of a crisis, it’s tempting to circle the wagons and
only protect a limited number of core protected areas, but we
can and should do better,” said Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Chief
Scientist at WWF and co-author of the study. “We absolutely need
to stop the bleeding, the poaching of tigers and their prey in
core breeding areas, but we need to go much further and secure
larger tiger landscapes before it is too late.” Wild tiger
numbers have declined to as few as 3,200 today compared to
100,000 a century ago, due to poaching of tigers and their prey,
habitat destruction and human-ti