Recent surveys found 55 tigers in the region, and scientists owe much of this recovery to the creation of Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park along the border with Russia - the national park is now the largest protected area for tigers in the world at 14,600 km 2. In Northeast China, Amur tigers have made a promising comeback after being driven down to nearly 12-16 individuals in 2000. WWF’s report demonstrates that in every current tiger range country but China, the majority of range recovery areas were within 100 km of current tiger populations - well within the documented distance that tigers are known to disperse.īut even where recovery has been slow, there is hope. This process is already underway in some parts of their range, thanks to efforts like habitat connectivity, forest restoration and prey base monitoring in several countries. Traversing through ‘ecological corridors’, or forested tracts that serve as connectivity routes between habitats, tigers are engineered to move between healthy forests, if given the chance.

Owing to these traits, WWF’s new study suggests that if habitats are protected, connected, and stocked with prey, tigers can effectively expand their own range through their natural need to roam. They roam large distances and can adapt to a wide variety of landscapes - from the humid swampy mangroves of the Sundarbans to the icy mountains of Northeast China. Though they’re a conservation-dependent species, tigers are built for survival. When given the chance, tigers can expand their own range Here are 6 reasons why this vision for tiger range expansion is both possible and necessary for the long-term survival of tigers: 1. But the report signals that if governments act urgently and collectively, we still have the opportunity to bring back Asia’s roar.

On paper, this vision may seem bold and highly ambitious given the scale of the challenges at hand - not to mention the fact that the world is currently grappling with multiple overlapping environmental and humanitarian crises.

Tiger growl