More tigers live in captivity in the United States than in the wild globally. The welfare and conservation implications of the captive tiger industry are deeply concerning.
The captive tiger industry in the United States and globally represents a welfare and conservation failure of enormous scale. Cubs bred for tourist interactions are handled intensively at ages when they should be with their mothers, then discarded to inadequate private facilities when they grow too large to be safely handled. Captive tiger facilities range from accredited zoological parks with reasonable standards to roadside operations where animals pace in barren concrete enclosures. The trade in captive tigers also creates legal cover for illegal wildlife products and undermines conservation of wild populations.