Amur Tiger by S.Brickman. CC BY-SA 2.0

This Saturday, July 29, is Global Tiger Day. Tigers (Panthera tigris) are not doing well. There are only about 3,900 of them left in the wild, and they have lost 96% of their historic range (Panthera, 2015d). The primary threats to tigers are habitat loss/fragmentation, livestock-related conflicts, and rampant poaching for the traditional Asian medicine (TAM) trade. This latter threat is the most severe, and is primarily responsible for the tiger’s precipitous decline. As tigers become more scarce, other large cats (such as jaguars and snow leopards) are increasingly being targeted for the TAM trade. Thus the fate of multiple cat species is tied to that of tigers’.

The NGO Panthera has launched a new fundraiser to help reverse the tiger’s decline. Panthera is committed to conserving all 38 of the world’s wild cat species, and they do…