Tigers face interconnected threats from habitat loss, prey depletion, and illegal trade that compromise both population viability and individual animal welfare across Asia.
Tiger welfare in the wild is directly linked to habitat quality and prey availability. Tigers in prey-depleted forests face chronic nutritional stress and are driven toward livestock predation that brings them into lethal conflict with farming communities. Snare trapping — set for deer and pigs but catching anything — causes extreme welfare suffering: tigers trapped in wire snares may struggle for days before dying or being found by rangers. Injuries from escaped snares cause chronic disability and reduced hunting capacity leading to starvation. Retaliatory killing following livestock depredation causes additional welfare harm through often poorly executed shooting. The welfare case for tiger conservation is therefore direct: protecting tigers from snares, maintaining prey populations, and managing human-tiger conflict non-lethally all directly reduce individual tiger suffering alongside preventing extinction.