International Tiger Day 2022: Interesting Facts and Their Present Population

INTERNATIONAL TIGER DAY 2022: Tigers are majestic, large predators belonging to the big cat family, with the Royal Bengal Tiger arguably being the most famous subspecies. They are a solitary predator, maintaining the balance of the forest fauna by keeping the numbers of ungulates (mammals with hooves) in check through hunting. Unfortunately, tigers have become endangered due to human activity such as poaching and habitat loss. International Tiger Day is celebrated worldwide on July 29 to raise demands for its protection and conservation. Below we look at a number of interesting facts about tigers and their present population.

Facts about tigers

1. International Tiger Day is celebrated on July 29 because it was on this day in 2010 that the International Tiger Summit took place in St. Petersburg, Russia.
2. Governments of 13 nations, which have tiger ranges, pledged to cooperate and help double the population of wild tigers by 2022.
3. TX2 was the name given to the conservation pledge.
4. In certain places, notably the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, India, the tiger population has indeed doubled since 2010.
5. 2022 is the Chinese year of the Tiger. Ironically, countless tigers are poached for use in Chinese traditional medicines. Wild tigers are more or less extinct in China.
6. China has about 200 or more tiger breeding farms developed for the sole purpose of slaughtering them to extract their bones for use in Chinese traditional medicine.
7. As per World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are only about 3,900 wild tigers left in the world today. In the 1990s, there were an estimated 100,000 tigers in the wild.
8. Wild tiger populations have risen of late, thanks to countries like India, Nepal, Bhutan and Russia. Patrolling in wildlife reserves has intensified, and cooperation with people living near tiger zones has improved.
9. Use of cameras and the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) app have helped forest rangers reduce poaching.
10. Kazakhstan, which lost its wild tigers about 70 years ago, is working to reintroduce tigers by 2025.