Species → Tiger
Tiger
Panthera tigris
What if it disappeared?
Impact LowFailing to protect enough habitat to sustain a tiger population also leaves unprotected the many other species that share that habitat — a conservation-planning rationale rather than a directly measured ecological effect.
ExtrapolatedDetail
Raisonnement d'« espèce parapluie », largement utilisé en planification de la conservation depuis les années 1980-1990 pour les grands prédateurs à vastes domaines vitaux.
Tigers need territories so vast and so intact that protecting them for the tiger's sake amounts, in practice, to protecting every species that lives there — a planning principle validated by the overlap of protected areas, not by a direct measurement of benefit to each species involved.
What's missing to confirm it: The real extent of protection afforded to other species, compared to a conservation plan that targeted them directly, isn't measured consistently from one reserve to another.
What would happen to deer and wild boar populations in the complete absence of the tiger as a predator, at the scale of an entire ecosystem, hasn't been directly measured.
InsufficientDetail
Unlike cases such as the wolf in Yellowstone, no large-scale tiger reintroduction or disappearance has been the subject of a complete before/after ecological study — prey regulation by tigers remains an extrapolation from the general theory of apex predators.
Documentation
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IUCN Cat Specialist Group — Panthera tigris, statut et effectifs
Accessed August 7, 2026
Last verified: August 7, 2026