Chapter 40 – Roads to Recovery or Catastrophic Loss: How Will the Next Decade End for Wild Tigers?

Publisher Summary This chapter summarizes the trends revealed by two range-wide analyses on the conservation potential of tigers, performed a decade apart. The analysis is focuses on the managing large landscapes that harbor populations of tigers across all the ecotypes they inhabit. The second range-wide assessment is used to present three possible future scenarios for tigers. The first scenario extends the status quo of current rates of decline in tiger habitat and connectivity. The second projects the consequences of modest habitat restoration on landscapes and populations. The third invokes the importance of governments, NGOs, and others to make strong, lasting commitments to save tiger lands and tigers. The latter also predicts the disastrous effects of a legalized trade in farmed tigers on wild populations that will exacerbate other more regional effects such as the spread of logging into remaining habitats and the growth of the palm oil industry in the region.