Several years ago, tigers were feared to be headed for extinction. Their numbers in the wild were dwindling by the year, dropping from an estimated 100,000 back in the 1900s to just about 3,000 during a tiger census in 2010.
In 2010, officials from 13 countries came together to strike a plan for a recovery. And now it seems the efforts are coming to fruition.
While there are still less than 3,500 wild tigers, the population should hit over 6,000 by 2022, if the conservation efforts continue, according to a recent study in the Science Advances journal.
“Tigers proliferate rapidly where prey and sheltered habitat are abundant,” the study states. The problem is they are loners and generally need a territory of over 11 square miles of forest.
