More Tigers Are Kept in Captivity in America Than Free-Roaming Tigers Globally
Back in June 2020 we carried a news article “B.Grimm Group, a major supporter of WWF Thailand helping save Thailand’s tigers” which referred to:
“According to WWF Thailand, there were approximately 100,000 wild tigers in the world at the beginning of the 20th century, but that population had declined to about 3,200 in 2010.”.
We recently received the interesting email below from trent@worldanimalfoundation.org:
“I noticed that your article references an outdated stat. You mentioned that there are “3,200” tigers in the wild. Based on our most recent data, these figures have been updated, and According to the latest data, there has been an increase in the number of tigers, and now The Total Number of Wild Tigers Worldwide is 5,574.
As one of the leading organizations in advocacy, it’s the World Animal Foundation’s utmost duty to ensure such statistics are current, not just on our platform but also on other relevant platforms.
Having recently revised our article with the newest statistics, I wanted to share this so you might consider a similar update.”.
From the article:
According to the WWF, the total number of wild tigers worldwide is 5,574, and in the US, there are 5,000 tigers being held captive.
If all the people/institutions who “own” tigers were to release them back into the wild (and it’s almost impossible to do that for various reasons), they wouldn’t be on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s endangered list.
Texas May Have the 2nd Largest Tiger Population Due to People Keeping Them as Pets
Interesting to know that close to Bangkok there are tigers in Unesco-listed Dong Phayayen–Khao Yai Forest Complex, part of Khao Yai National Park, just 2-3 hours drive north-east from The Big Mango. According to ‘Thailand’s tiger conservation wins face poaching setbacks’ article of 13 December 2023,
“In Thailand, there are currently 148 – 189 tigers in the wild, the largest population in Southeast Asia, according to Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), which is in charge of the tiger conservation programme. In other Southeast Asian countries, the situation is worrisome. There are no detected tigers in Laos and Cambodia. Only a few wild tigers are left in Vietnam, if at all, and about 22 tigers in Myanmar, according to its forest department in 2019. In Malaysia, fewer than 150 Malayan tigers were estimated to roam the wild in 2020, compared to around 3,000 in the 1950s”.
