The Tiger Species Survival Plan

In North America, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) has developed the Species Survival Plan (SSP), which is a cooperative management program among zoos. The Tiger SSP was developed in 1982 and was the first of 76 SSPs now managing 125 endangered and threatened species. Similar cooperative programs operate in other regions, such as the Endangered Species Programme (EEP) in Europe, the Species Management Programme (SMP) in Australasia, and others. Each program is run by a Coordinator and Management Group which make recommendations about the care, management, transfer, and breeding of each individual animal in the program based upon its history and genetic background. This allows zoos to maximize the genetic health of the population given their limited cage space.

The Tiger SSP manages three of the five tiger subspecies: Siberian, Sumatran and Indochinese. Zoos in the Tiger SSP zoos (which does not include all tigers in North America) currently have about:

• 160 Siberian tigers
• 60 Sumatran tigers
• 10 Indochinese tigers (but there are plans to expand zoo cage space and the number of animals
• 25 generic tigers (of unconfirmed pedigree, origin, orsubspecies)

There are a total of 255 tigers in the tiger SSP.

The Tiger Global Conservation Strategy recommends the following distribution of tiger subspecies:

Each subspecies is managed in the region where it is found in the wild (that is, Siberian tigers in Russia, Sumatran tigers in Southeast Asia, etc.). Whenever possible, more than one population should be maintained to prevent a catastrophe (such as disease epidemic, economic crash, war) in one population from wiping out all captive tigers of that subspecies. Europe has the most cage space for tigers, followed by North America, so these regions are managing more than one subspecies. The South China tiger is struggling with only 50 animals but ideally a second population will be established in the future. The eventual goal is to have at least 250 of each subspecies managed in captivity.

More about the Tiger SSP and its relation to the Global Siberian Tiger Program

Back to the Captive Management Introduction