Thought to occupy less than seven percent of their original range, today’s tiger populations are threatened by habitat loss and degradation, poaching, tiger-human conflict, loss of prey, and other factors. Four of nine subspecies have disappeared from the wild just in the past hundred years and the Amur, Sumatran, and Malayan tigers are all thought to number fewer than 500 individuals in the wild.
AZA Tiger SSP Conservation Campaign
The AZA Tiger Species Survival Plan has published an Educators Guide and in 2012, the SSP developed the Tiger Conservation Campaign. This campaign encourages AZA-accredited facilities to contribute to a selection of six tiger conservation efforts in the range states of Amur, Malayan, and Sumatran tigers. Activities such as securing source sites for breeding tigers, ensuring high-quality tiger protection is given to tigers in these source sites through robust ranger patrols and extensive intelligence gathering mechanisms, and monitoring of tiger populations, prey populations, and habitat extent and quality, are vitally important to long-term tiger conservation. Visit the AZA Tiger SSP's Conservation Campaign website or read more.
AZA Members Help Tigers
Every year, AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums provide information about their field conservation and science activities to AZA’s Conservation and Research Database. Members enter program updates each year; follow the link and use the search fields to explore how individual AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums are helping tigers and other animals. Read more about the AZA community’s commitment to conservation and science.