Year of the Tiger: Global Tiger Count Soars, in Just Seven Years

The population of tigers in the world is up 40% from 2015 estimations, largely thanks to improvements in the monitoring of wild tigers, as well as to more extensive conservation efforts. 

The new tiger assessment was released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with new figures estimating that there are between 3,726 to 5,578 tigers currently living in the wild across the globe. 

“A fairly significant chunk of that 40% increase is explained by the fact that we’re better at counting them, that many governments in particular have really sort of moved heaven and earth to do massive scale surveys,” says executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) big cat program, Luke Hunter. 

Though tigers are still considered to be an endangered species, Hunter further elaborates on how assessments like these matched with conservation efforts can indeed allow tiger populations to rebound and recover. “When you succeed in saving tigers or conserving tigers, you are conserving very large wilderness landscapes, with a huge host of biodiversity but also a whole bunch of benefits to the human communities that live in and around those landscapes,” Hunter explains.