Dying animal species - Tiger

Tiger is the largest cat in the world that was once in 19th century represented in Asia with more than 100000 representatives and now 200 years later is brought to the brink of extinction. There used to be eight subspecies of tigers and now only five remain. Here is the table of remaining tiger species. Shown numbers are couple of years old so real number of tigers in nature is even smaller than this.

Tiger Subspecies	Number of tigers in nature	Number in zoos
Panthera tigris altaica	250 - 400	About 600
Panthera tigris sumatrae	Less than 500	About 50
Panthera tigris tigris	3000 - 5000	About 300
Panthera tigris amoyensis	30 - 80	About 50
Panthera tigris corbetti	800 - 1300	About 70

Another beautiful animal and once proud ruler of Asian jungles brought to the edge of extinction (Panthera Tigris Altaica).

Although tigers are protected by law in all countries in which they live, poaching isn't stopping and it's endangering remaining numbers of these gracious cats. It's sad prediction but it looks that soon there'll be tigers only in zoos and not in their natural habitats. Many would say better this than extinction and they're probably right, because in zoos tigers have all necessary concern for their health and procreation and this time big accent is put on quality of this worthy practice. With the development of biology and DNA researching lot can be done for preservation of these beautiful animals, but something also must be done to at least try to restore previous natural balance which is almost impossible task considering current ecological awareness of people around the globe. What future holds for tigers is still uncertain and chances for peaceful life of tigers in their natural habitats are very slim if any.