human conflicts
With the increase in population resulting in the increase in demand for space, the tigers’ habitats are being shrunken into smaller and smaller areas. Humans and tigers must compete for space, and their territories may overlap one another as a consequence. This increases the chance for conflicts between each other as both live in close proximity to one another, and thus tigers have become a problem for local communities that live in or near tiger territory. The conflicts threaten the small amount of remaining wild tigers, as forests shrink and prey get scarce (also due to poaching and habitat loss), tigers are forced to hunt domestic livestock in nearby communities. These communities depend on these livestock for a living, and in retaliation the tigers around the area would be killed or captured in order to stop the theft of livestock. These tigers are known to end up in black markets, further encouraging poaching as potential buyers become more interested. Local communities also depend on forests for fuel wood, food and timber and thus spend a lot of time in the forest area. Tigers may mistake a crouching man gathering wood as a gazelle or any other prey, and thus may attack. Communities are scared of man-eating tigers, and if these tigers regularly hunt humans wandering in the forest, they may become accustomed to the taste of human flesh. These communities would then hunt the tigers as a mean of protection, further decreasing the already small population of wild tigers. Figure 2.d below shows that 50% of tigers that attack people in Russia are wounded, as means of protection. This graph does not take into account any tigers that are killed in the conflicts, but from the information provided it outlines that majority of human-tiger conflicts end up with the tiger wounded, diseased or killed.