Tiger Reintroduction

Captive tiger populations are a genetic insurance policy for the future. As long as tigers survive in the wild, we may not need to collect on this insurance. Already, some tiger populations are so small and isolated that their genetic diversity has become weak. If there are not enough tigers in an area, they may begin to mate with their own relatives. Such inbreeding is unhealthy because it can produce sick or weak cubs with birth defects. Inbreeding can also reduce the ability of tigers to adapt to environmental change.

Someday, wild tiger populations may decline or go extinct. Then the genetic pool of captive tigers will become immensely important.

There are several ways to transfer the genetic codes of captive tigers into wild populations, but biologists have not yet mastered any of them.

Reintroducing captive animals directly into the wild has succeeded with other animals (for example, the black-footed ferret and the red wolf), but tigers present a special challenge. It would be a very expensive program. First, the tigers would have to be habituated to the wild in a large enclosure in the field. Biologists would monitor their health and their success at hunting and breeding. Only when the tiger's survival seemed likely would they be truly released into the wild.

It would also be risky for the captive tigers, their wild cousins, and the people who lived in the area. The newly released tigers would face many new threats and challenges such as securing and defending their new territory from other tigers. Their survival would also rely entirely on their new hunting skills. The wild population of tigers might be exposed to new diseases which the captive tigers might have contracted at their zoos. And people in the area might be hurt or even killed by tigers which had little fear of humans and even saw them as they did their zookeepers--as providers of food.

Therefore, it would probably be necessary to release tiger offspring which had been reared in semi-natural areas, rather than their parents, who were habituated to people.

Artificial insemination and In vitro fertilization are highly experimental procedures. One day, after much more research and testing, these methods may become the best way to reintroduce the genes from captive tigers into wild populations.

Back to the Captive Management Introduction