Wild tiger populations are recovering in some regions after decades of decline, but individual tiger welfare in both wild and captive settings faces ongoing challenges.
Tiger welfare exists at two very different scales. For wild tigers in recovering populations, the individual welfare challenges are largely those faced by large carnivores in fragmented, human-modified landscapes: human-tiger conflict, prey availability fluctuations, and territorial pressures from increasing populations. For captive tigers — the majority of the global tiger population — welfare quality varies from the carefully managed conditions of AZA and EAZA programs to the profoundly inadequate conditions of many Asian tiger farms, where animals are kept for commercial exploitation. The tiger farming industry poses a double welfare problem: individual tigers in farms live in poor conditions, and the commercial trade in tiger products from farms arguably stimulates demand that incentivizes poaching of wild tigers. The welfare case for closing tiger farms and improving wild tiger management is clear; the political challenge of doing so in jurisdictions where tiger farming is economically significant is substantial.