Habitat loss and fragmentation is another important reason why tigers disappearing. Without a safe and healthy home for tigers and their prey, neither can survive in the wild. Humans are rapidly encroaching into wilderness areas that were once ruled exclusively by the tiger. In India, which is home to over one third of the world's wild tigers, the human population has exceeded one billion inhabitants.

As tigers compete with humans for land, they find less and less to eat. Local people hunt the same prey as tigers do, pressing tigers to resort to domestic animals and, on rarer occasions, even humans....