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Even after four decades, seeing a tiger in the wild still fills Ullas Karanth with awe. “They’re beyond anything a human painter or sculptor could create,” says Karanth, founder of the Centre for Wildlife Studies, a conservation group in India, where he has been studying tigers since the 1980s.
Tigers can weigh more than 600 pounds, leap up to 20 feet laterally and take down prey nearly five times their weight. But for all their strength and ferocity, their position atop the food chain in their habitats can be fragile. To survive, a single tiger must consume about 100 pounds of flesh each week. That’s equivalent to about 50 large animals such as deer or antelope each year. “This means tigers require very large tracts of land,” says Karanth. “But land alone isn’t enough—the land must be filled with prey.”
In the past century or so, however, people have been closing in, clearing vast swaths of habitat for agriculture and livestock. Hunting and poaching have also driven down numbers of prey animals. An estimated global tiger population of 100,000 in 1900, spread across Asia and parts of the Middle East, today measures an estimated 4,500 animals. That’s an increase from 3,200 tigers in 2010, but Abishek Harihar, a researcher with the conservation organization Panthera, says the 2010 number was probably an undercount. The uptick, he says, more likely represents improved survey efforts and methodology than it does increasing numbers. Starkly, tigers now occupy less than 7 percent of their historical range.
Direct conflict with people has not helped their plight. In India, home to some 70 percent of the world’s wild tigers, human population growth and development are pressing people and tigers closer together. Millions of people now live in “buffer zones” around tiger reserves, and each year tigers kill 50 to 60 people and hundreds of livestock, which can spark retaliatory killings.
Karanth’s daughter, Krithi Karanth, a renowned wildlife researcher in her own right and now the head of the Centre for Wildlife Studies, spends significant time and resources trying to reduce human-wildlife conflict. One of the center’s programs works with around 2,000 rural communities to facilitate access to government funds set aside for people who have lost family members or livestock to animal attacks. “These payments don’t fully make up for what people have lost, emotionally or monetarily, but it can help them face it,” Krithi Karanth tells me. “If these payments don’t reach people swiftly, the chance of retaliation and building resentment toward tigers goes up.”
Another program, now active in nearly 1,000 rural schools, teaches children about the critical role tigers and other animals play in their local ecosystems. Otherwise, Krithi Karanth says, “the kids view wildlife with hostility and fear.” It also provides the students with simple tips, such as carrying flashlights and talking loudly while traveling in groups, to keep them safe near wildlife. “If we can teach empathy—that every non-human life matters—I think people and tigers will be better off.”
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This article is a selection from the September/October 2024 issue of Smithsonian magazine
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