Tigers face a dual welfare crisis - wild populations face extinction while thousands more are bred in captive facilities with inadequate welfare standards and links to illegal wildlife trade.
Captive tigers outside accredited zoological facilities face profound welfare problems. Private ownership often involves inadequate space, inappropriate diet, lack of veterinary care, and social isolation. Cub petting operations remove cubs from mothers almost immediately after birth, causing stress and preventing normal social development. Tiger farms housing thousands of animals for potential commercial slaughter subject tigers to lives that offer nothing of what they need as apex predators requiring vast territories. Meanwhile, wild tigers face constant threat of poaching, snaring, and conflict killing.