Impact of human development toward panthera tigris

Introduction

Felidae is cat biological famil yand its members are called felids. All felids are carnivoresin the Carnivora order. The most common felid sare ordinary cats and other members includeall wild cats including big cats (Baryshnikov ,2011 ). The Panthera is agenus in the Felidae family (cat), which includes four known species, the tiger, lion, jaguar, and leopard. Thisgenus covers half of the Pantherinae subfamily which is the big cat (Diedrich, 2011) .Tigers isone of the species in Panthera genus and itis an animalia that belong to the phylum Chordata, subfilum vertebrate, class of mammals, carnivores, felidae (cats), Panthera as genus, andspecies belonging to tigris.

The Panthera tigri sor also commonly known as tiger is one of themost recognizable cat with alargest size and have adark vertical stripes pattern on orange furwith alighter.

Backgrounds of Tigris

In 1758, Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist gave Felis trigasas asthe scientific name. However, in 1929 Reginald Innes Pocock who is aBritish taxonomist hasdeclared that tiger is an animal from genus of Panthera.

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Started from that time, the tiger hastagged with Panthera tigris as the scientific name (Mazk, 2010).

Tiger is an animals thatbehave solitary ,tend to live alone and territorial. The size of the tiger shelter coveragedepends on the number of the victim and the chance of mating. A female tiger can dominateabout 20 km2 area, while the male tigers are more widespread which approximately about60-100 km2. Territorial coverage of the male tiger often overlaps with some female tigers. In all carnivores, tigers are the largest carnivorous cat and the third largest carnivore afterpolar bears and brown bears (Barrett et al.

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,2011) .There are six sub-species of tigers in thegenus Panthera that are still alive today from its original number which is nine sub-species.

The remaining three sub-species of P.tigris have been considered officially extinct(Yamaguchi et al, 2013). Three out of the nine P.tigris subspecies have been declared extinctare Panthera tigris balica (Bali tiger), Panthera tigris sondaica (Javan tiger) ,Panthera tigrisvirgata (Caspian tiger) and six others are classified as endangered which are Panthera tigrisaltaica (Siberian tiger), Panthera tigris amoyensis (South China tiger), Panthera tigriscorbetti (Indochinese tiger), Panthera tigris tigris (Bengal tiger), Panthera tigris sumatrae (Sumatran tiger), Panthera tigris malayensis (Seimon ,2013).

Hunting and destruction of habitats caused the global P.tigris population to decline fromabout 100,000 in the 1900s become less than 4,000 in the 1970s (Jackson ,1997). Today fourof the remaining subspecies of the P.tigris are considered endangered by the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN), while two further subspecies are considered to becritically endangered. The total population of the remaining six tiger subspecies estimatedbetween 3,000 and 3,600 (Seidensticker ,2010) .

Extinction of Panthera tigris

Although there were once nine subspecies of tigers, human developments have resulted inthe extinction of three of these subspecies which is

  • Panthera tigris balica (Bali tiger),
  • Panthera tigris sondaica (Javan tiger) ,
  • Panthera tigris virgata (Caspian tiger).

Panthera tigris virgata ; once inhabited the area around the Caspian Sea, through Turkey,Iran and Central Asia to the Chinese desert of Xinjiang. As the Russian began to colonize Turkey in the late 1800s, they began to hunt the Caspian tiger and they also hunt the prey ofthis species causing many of the species die because of starvation. It is believed that the last Caspian tiger was killed in the 1990s (Driscoll et al, 2012). Panthera tigris sondaica ; is a tiger who lives in Java which has the largest bodycompared to other subspecies.

Adult males tiger can reach up to 250 cm long, height about 65cm with weight of about 150 kg to 200 kg while female tigers are lighter which is between 75 kg to 115 kg. In 1950s it is estimated that there are still about 25 of this species 1972 it isestimated that only remaining and in 1980s, the species are predicted to be extinct (Irawan,2014) .

Panthera tigris balica; is the smallest tiger among the three extincted tiger subspecies(Budaarsa ,2013). This species are said have been wandering around the rainforest area Baliisland, Indonesian (Sherly ,2017). This subspecies was declared extinct on 1937 due to habitat loss and poaching (Budaarsa ,2013).

Why Panthera tigris Endangered

Deforestation by human is the process that causes a natural habitat loses its ability toaccommodate existing species. In this process, organisms that have used the habitat site willlose their habitat thereby reducing their biodiversity including tigers (Luskin et al., 2017). Intropical region, the rate of deforestation are high which resulting great loss of biodiversity andwild habitats including the P.tigris (Geist & Lambi n, 2002). The tropical deforestation alsoone of the main sources of greenhouse gas emission (GHG) which accounting for almost 20%of the total anthropogenic GHG emission and amajor contributor to global warming (Bacciniet al., 2012 ). Global warming causes environment to be highly extremed, therefore it is nothabitable by the tiger (Houghton ,2012).

Human is doing an illegal hunting of tiger fortheir own sake. Among the 484 shops,aquarter of the dealers had tiger for sale. Despite being protected by the law, the market ofselling the endangered species is still exist. The skin of tiger is believed able to possesamagical powers which can protects the owners from black magic (Bhattacharya, 2010). Onthe other hand, Chinese people also believed that some part of tiger body stored medicalproperties, such as pain killer and aphrodisiac (Andrew, 2006). Aphrodisiac or also known as4love drug is a substance that increases libido (desire for sexual activity )when consumed(Gauthaman et el,2006) .However, there is no scientific evidence supporting the claims (Still,2003). While the bone of tiger is used in traditional medicines such as treatment for rheumatism (Bhattacharya, 2010).

Consequences to Ecosystem

The disappearance of one species in their food chain will causing aside effect on otherspecies. Tiger is one of the main predator in its food chain (Sinclair et al,2010) . The loss ofthe tiger can actually cau ses the amount of prey species increases. Therefore agreater threatwill presents due to high competition among the tiger sprey in order to survive .In this case,tiger plays a vital role in keeping its ecosystem balance by maintaining between theherbivores which is tiger sprey and the forest plant life (Mukul, 2017).

If tigers went extinct,there wouldn tbe enough space to store and feed atoo great number of they herbivores . Tigeris on the top of its food chain thus it has no natural predators. If the tiger were to disappear,there would be consequences for all the links of this chain, with the effects even influencingplants and also people life. (Dotson ,2018).

Conservation

The tiger's hunting activities and the destruction of habitats have resulted in the numberof wild tigers plunging heavily every year. At the beginning of the 20th century, it isestimated that there are over 100,000 tigers in the world, but now there are about 3000 wildtigers (Seidensticker ,2010) .There are many conservation efforts have been carried out in many countries.

Opening areserve forest is one of the significant project that has been done for the tigerconsevation. India is one of the country with largest population of P.tigris (Joshi, 2013) andalso known as the districts that identified as highest number of tiger scrime (Sharma ,2014). They are running a massive integrated conservation effort called Project Tiger since 1973,involving the opening of new reserve forests to restore the wild Bengal tigers (P.t.tigris)5(Badola ,2014).

In addition, the Indian government transfers hundreds of villagers away fromtiger habitats to reduce the undesirable collision between humans and tiger and also toeradicate the illegal tiger hunting activities (McGuigan ,2009). Other than that, in China, thereare one organization named The Save China's Tigers who is working to introduce SouthChina Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis )which is confined in South Africa into its originalhabitat made into areserved forest, where the tiger is retrained to hone their hunting skills likeanormal wild animals and breeding naturally (Breitenmoser et al., 2006).

In terms of law enforcement, China government has banned the use of tiger's body partin the production of pharmaceutical drugs and establishing a legal offense concerning thepoaching of a tiger and the offenders can be punished (Challender & MacMillan, 2014).
Chinese also banned the trade of any tiger-related materials since 1993 because all tradeactivities related to that materials are illegal under the Convention on International Trade inEndangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ,also known as the Washington Convention (Abensperg-Traun, 2009) .

Conclusion

In this research, it is clearly shows that Panthera tigris is highly rated as an endangeredspecies that have the tendency to become extinct from this world as the three of its subspecies. Therefore, all parties should giving asupport on the efforts that have been carried out to savethe tiger. For the first time in century ,the number of tigers on the world is on the rise.Governments of the countries that are related to the tigers trying to increase the population ofthe species by twice in the wild life in 2022 (Joshi et al, 2016). According to the World Wild life Fund (WWF), the latest tiger data says there are about 3,890 tigers in the wild lifewhich is up from 3,200 in 2010 after acentury of decrease (Christina, 2016). This is agoodsign for the tiger species and this should be done continuously if we want the tiger species tobe eternal for the view of future generation. In conclusion, tiger should be conserved to ensure the ecosystem is remain balanced.

References

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Updated: May 19, 2021
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Impact of human development toward panthera tigris. (2019, Nov 20). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/biology-iswandi-example-essay

Impact of human development toward panthera tigris essay
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