An Animal That Needs to be Saved

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

7/14/20242 min read

Tigers, the biggest cat in the cat family and native to countries in Asia. The tiger is a beautiful animal with black stripes and contains orange, white, or even sometimes a blue-greyish fur. These creatures used to be all over the planet but of recent times, the tiger population has been going down and down until now, they are at risk of extinction.

As of the year 2024, tigers first appeared around 2 million years ago and about 100,00 of them existed in the wild. However, over the last 150 years, the amount of tigers has decreased by 95% due to human activity and as of last year in 2023, only about 5,500 are left in the wild, putting them at risk of extinction.

Source:https://beautifulbengaltiger.weebly.com/uploads/3/9/9/4/39942519/6987253_orig.png?1427823330

The greatest human contributes to making the amount of tigers go down was due to killing and trading their skin. However, other human activity like destroying tiger habitats and climate change have also caused tigers to lose their life’s. Despite legal protection being provided to try and stop tiger poaching, many poachers continue to engage in illegal wildlife trading.

Not only do tigers need to be kept alive in order to save a wonderful animal, but, they are also needed to prevent even more animals and habitats from being endangered. Since tigers are a predator at the top of the food chain that consume many herbivores, they maintain a balance between predator’s and herbivores. Ecosystems always have more herbivores then carnivores to prevent carnivores from eating the whole population but carnivores are still essential in ecosystems. This is because if carnivores like tigers no longer exist in a ecosystem, the amount of herbivores would increase greatly, if there are to many herbivores, the ecosystem would not be able to support enough food which would cause it to collapse. Therefore, keeping the balance between predator and prey is essential.


Since tigers have now became endangered species, society has been making efforts to save the remaining tigers and try to raise the population of tigers back up. For example, many tigers are not in captivity in places like zoos to allow them to be safe and breed with each other. There are also organizations that make efforts into protecting habitats like forests that tigers live in. With these efforts, hopefully tigers can repopulate and live peacefully with humans on Earth.

Sources:

  1. “Top 10 Facts about Tigers | WWF.” 2023. http://Www.wwf.org.uk. September 20, 2023. https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/tigers#:~:text=1..

  2. “Tiger | Species | WWF.” n.d. World Wildlife Fund. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/tiger#:~:text=Poaching%20and%20illegal%20wildlife%20trade.


  3. “Predation, Herbivory, and Parasitism | Learn Science at Scitable.” n.d.     http://Www.nature.com. Accessed June 28, 2024. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/predation-herbivory-and-parasitism-13261134/#:~:text=Herbivorous%2C%20predatory%2C%20and%20parasitic%20interactions.