The tiger's hold on the human imagination remains fast, even as the tiger's hold on the remnants of its former realm grows ever more tenuous. All across Asia, from Western India to the Russian Far East, tigers and tiger habitat are succumbing to the seemingly insatiable demands of expanding economies, growing populations, rising material expectations. Commercial markets and the escalating illegal trade in tiger parts have penetrated the tiger's last remaining bastions in the wild, followed closely by large-scale logging and advancing agricultural frontiers. Many observers have declared that the tiger is doomed.
Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society believes otherwise. With the Foundation's support, he and his WCS colleagues have mounted a range-wide effort to conserve viable tiger populations in key landscapes across Asia: the Western Ghat Mountains in southwestern India, the Western Forest Complex in Thailand, the Leuser Landscape in Northern Sumatra, the Endau-Rompin Landscape in peninsular Malaysia, and the Russian Far East.