Tigers are highly adaptable to their environment and are distributed over a wide range of areas, from Siberian taiga to open grasslands to tropical swamps. They are territorial and divide their own territory, and they live alone. Often large areas of habitat are required to support considerable prey populations. Along with this comes the fact that their habitat preferences overlap with some of the more densely populated areas of the planet, putting them in serious conflict with human interests. Of the nine subspecies of modern tigers, three are extinct and the remaining six are listed as endangered or critically endangered. The main direct causes are habitat loss, isolation and hunting by humans. Their distribution, which once ranged from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus in modern-day Iraq and Iran to most of South and East Asia, has declined sharply. Remaining tigers are either officially protected, or hunting, habitat loss, and resulting inbreeding are ongoing threats. In 2010, the World Wildlife Fund estimated that there were 3,200 tigers left in the world. There are about 400 tigers left on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and about 1,400 tigers in India and 50 tigers in China. In the 1980s, the world recognized that the Caspian tiger, which was once widely distributed in Chinas Xinjiang, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Mongolia and Russia, was extinct. Tigers in Bali and Java also became extinct in the 1930s and 1980s respectively.
This is a simple drawing of a tiger with a clever idea and worth learning!
