Amur tigers in Russia's Far East require vast territories and face persistent poaching pressure. Successful conservation has brought the population from near-extinction to approximately 500 individuals through intensive protection efforts.
Amur tiger conservation success is one of the most significant large carnivore recovery stories, demonstrating that intensive protection works. However, the remaining population lives in a landscape increasingly fragmented by roads, logging, and settlement. Tigers in small territories show elevated stress indicators and are more likely to conflict with humans. The welfare of wild tigers depends on prey abundance - landscapes with insufficient prey populations lead to nutritional stress, slower cub growth, and more frequent livestock predation that triggers retaliatory killing. Anti-poaching efforts protect both individual welfare and population persistence. The challenge now is expanding and connecting protected areas to allow population growth without human-wildlife conflict.