Mum, what is a Tiger?
The Big Cat reduced to skill and bones


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Today it sounds impossible, but, already in 2022, if we fail to reverse the trend of the decline of wild populations, this sad question could become reality. The environmental association estimates that between 2000 and 2012 were pull literally to pieces 1,400 tigers, to obtain bones to be used in the drugs of traditional medicine and skin to feed the illegal market. The countdown has already begun: at this speed the tiger will be extinct in the wild in the next nine years. Also the loss of more than 90% of the natural habitat has contributed to this dramatic decline and has turned the big feline from predator into a prey. The scarce residual natural area and the small extension of the "wild islands" where the tiger is still present makes the tiger a fragile animal. Exposed to poachers (who have no difficulty to catch them) and to the conflict with local people, tigers, whose natural prey are now almost disappeared, are pushed to go close to human villages in search for food ... read more

Today only 3200 live in the wild. India gives hospitality to the largest population, and is here where there are the big number of victims from poaching. In recent years these numbers are decreasing, thanks to the success of conservation policies that include legislation increasingly severer, the prevention and the creation of new areas of integral protection. In other countries as China, the phenomenon is instead growing. Today, China is the largest market for the products extracted from the body of the tigers. Killed by unscrupulous poachers that become every day more and more aggressive, confined in small areas, besieged by an ever-expanding human population, the last remaining tigers now are fighting their hardest battle: Will humans be able to transform themselves from enemies to trustable allies of the Tiger?