The Mekong tiger may be extinct

During a conference in Thailand today, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned that the number of tigers in countries along the Mekong River has dropped by more than 70% in the past 12 years and is in great danger. strains.

A tiger in the zoo of Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, China.High demand for tiger has pushed the tiger into danger of extinction - Photo: AFP

According to AFP news agency, WWF estimates that since 1998 - the tiger year - the number of wild tigers in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam has dropped from 1,200 to only 350.

WWF said the decline is also a worldwide trend. Currently the number of wild tigers in the world is only 3,200, the lowest ever, compared to 20,000 in the 1980s and 100,000 a century ago.

According to WWF, the demand for tiger bones to increase bone density according to Chinese medicine is the main reason for the sharp decline in wild tiger populations in Southeast Asia. Infrastructure development activities such as building roads through forests also destroy the natural habitat of tigers.

A baby tiger in Riau Province, Indonesia - Photo: AP

'Governments need to act vigorously to ensure this species is not extinct,' AFP quoted Nick Cox as part of WWF's Mekong Region Conservation Program. 'It is likely that the tiger will become extinct in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the next tiger year, 2022, if we do not act to protect them.'

WWF said that even when the tiger was proliferating in the Mekong region, now each country in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia only has about 30 children left. The majority of the remaining Mekong tigers live in mountainous areas on the Thai-Myanmar border.

September 2001 Russia will host a global tiger conservation conference in Vladivostok.