Our Tiger

Tiger.co.uk are continuing our support of Bengal Tigers with our current focus being on a female Bengal tiger named Kamrita, along with others living within the protected forests and grasslands of Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. Kamrita is estimated to be between 7-8 years old and she has two healthy young cubs that are about 16 months* old. Her name (pronounced kaa-am-rita) comes from the region of wildlife reserve where she is most often spotted – the Amrite area. She shows a liking for the thriving grasslands and lush forests that Chitwan provides, and is a permanent resident in the park. She thrills the monitoring teams with regular appearances alongside her cubs. There is little wonder that she loves this area as the rich, dense forest provides plenty of shelter and a natural hiding place to protect her cubs from poachers. Its wide variety of food also provides a perfect home for the tigress' prey – such as deer and wild boar.

Despite being the largest subspecies, in terms of population, the Bengal tiger is an endangered species, population estimates are low as 1,400 with only 150 left in Nepal itself.

Sadly 60 Bengal tigers were poached in India during 2009 and it's through our help and others like us that these numbers are as low as this. The work of the WWF would be made almost impossible if its support was not as great as it is through organisations such as ourselves.

For more than a 1000 years tiger parts have been essential ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine. These parts include: claws, teeth, fat, nose leather, bone, eyeballs, tails, bile, whiskers, brain, and even dung! The parts are used to treat everything from love sickness, to convulsions and malaria. Even though it is now illegal to hunt tigers, poachers are still slaughtering them. Over 400 tigers are killed every year.

The Tigers' habitat is shrinking as the human population grows. In order for tigers to live in the wild they need food, water, shelter and room to hunt. With the human pressure on their habitats the tigers find it increasingly difficult to survive.

Adopt your own Tiger!

You too could adopt a tiger! All you need to do is go to the WWF website page here and follow the instructions.

*At time of going to press.