Adding to the existing pressures of habitat loss, poaching and depletion of prey species, a new threat to tiger populations in the wild has surfaced in the form of a deadly virus. According to a new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), canine distemper virus (CDV) has the potential to be a significant driver in pushing the tigers towards extinction.
While CDV has recently been shown to lead to the deaths of individual tigers, its long-term impacts on tiger populations had never before been studied, researchers said.
The authors evaluated these impacts on the Amur tiger population in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Zapovednik (SABZ), where tiger numbers declined from 38 individuals to 9 in the years 2007 to 2012.