Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
How many wild tigers are left?
Global estimates in the 2020s sit near 4,000-5,500 depending on the year and method. India holds the majority. The number is a camera-trap product, not a Victorian hunter tale.
Did Project Tiger work?
India wild counts rose from a 1970s crisis to the largest national population. Methods changed (pugmarks to cameras), so the graph is not a single instrument. Southeast Asia did not copy the rebound.
What was Tx2?
A 2010 pledge by tiger-range states in St Petersburg to double wild numbers by 2022. Some countries gained; others lost. The slogan outlived the deadline.
Why not score tigers and lions the same?
Lions are Vulnerable with a wider African footprint and a tiny Gir relic. Tigers are Endangered, more forest-bound, and culturally heavier in South and East Asia. Scores stay relative across all 24 types.
Who was Jim Corbett in this story?
A hunter of man-eaters who wrote Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944) and later lent his name to India first national park -- a colonial-to-reserve arc.
Are Siberian tigers a separate conservation?
Panthera tigris tigris now lumps many mainland tigers in some taxonomies; Amur animals still have a Russian-Chinese border programme and a different prey winter.
IUCN: Endangered
The tiger future is a triad of climate, take and attention -- not a product roadmap.
Risk scores here track conservation pressure relative to other types. High resilience types sit in a calmer band; CR/EN types do not.
Conservation risk
Tiger sits in a critical pressure band in this atlas (resilience 14/100). Endangered. Wild numbers rose in India after Project Tiger (1973) and Tx2 pledges (2010); Southeast Asian and South China lineages did not share that graph.
Teaching snapshot as of September 2026 — not a live IUCN feed.
Safeguards
Listing and enforcement
CITES, ESA, RFMOs and national parks only work when patrols and papers move.
Site protection
A breeding lake, ice type or cavity tree cannot be replaced by a logo.
Prey and forage base
Seals, krill, ungulates, bamboo and sardines are the quiet half of the tiger budget.
Disease and toxin watch
Ebola, KHV, TTX, lead and rodenticides are type-specific ceilings.
English-language science capacity
The field sites in the techDeep lens still train the next census -- they are a safeguard only if funded.
What monitoring automates first
Census and acoustics
Camera traps, radar and moorings already take hours that used to be only notebooks.
Trade-document checks
eBCD and permit databases can flag a loin or a skin faster than a paper file.
Outbreak mapping
Flu and Ebola desks now run on shared dashboards -- still needing a human closer.
Visitor flow
Ticketing and hide cameras can be scheduled; habituation ethics cannot be fully automated.
Structural shifts
Climate as habitat law
Ice, bleach and river heat are now listing factors, not background weather.
From fortress to corridor
National parks plus gene flow -- panda belts, tiger landscapes, wolf packs on roads.
Fame as a take risk
Nemo, Jaws, Koko and Cecil still move capture, fear and donations in the same year.
English science is not the range
The localLens is a reading aid. Range-state languages still hold the living animal.
Outlook
Near term
Expect more listings, more cameras and more conflict paperwork -- not a sudden best-species ending.
Medium term
Sites that keep forage and enforcement will hold; single-lake and single-forest types stay brittle.
Long view
The tiger body plan will remain recognisable. The map of secure versus threatened populations will not.
Keep exploring
More in Wildlife
Lion
A social pantherine whose prides, Gir relic and 2015 Cecil killing still structure African conservation politics.
Overall 66 🐘African bush elephant
The atlas type is the bush elephant -- an ecosystem engineer whose ivory ban (1989) and split from forest elephants still structure African conservation.
Overall 61 🐺Gray wolf
A Holarctic pack hunter whose 1995 Yellowstone return and older Leopold ethics still structure predator politics.
Overall 78 🐼Giant panda
A bamboo specialist whose WWF logo, Wolong quake and 2016 IUCN downlist from EN to VU made a recovery into a brand.
Overall 41 🐻Polar bear
A marine bear whose seal-and-ice budget made Churchill, Knut and climate models into one public animal.
Overall 56 🦍Gorilla
The atlas type is the western gorilla -- a knuckle-walking ape whose Fossey-era mountain cousins and Koko lab fame split one public name.
Overall 45 🐋Blue whale
The largest animal whose 1966 IWC protection, 1982 moratorium and still-thin Antarctic recovery define a hunted giant.
Overall 65