On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Tigers Forever: Saving the World's Most Endangered Big Cat
by Steve Winter, with Sharon Guynup
National Geographic Books, 2013
A hundred years ago about 100,000 tigers lived in the wild. Today some 3,200 individuals remain. Drawing on a decade of tracking tigers throughout Asia, Winter's photographs and Guynup's prose bring readers close—sometimes uncomfortably close—to these creatures and those who fight their extinction. Tucked between beautiful images of the great cats playing and bathing, we find heartbreaking photographs of slain tigers, orphaned cubs and a distressed puppy kept as bait in a poacher's snare. Poachers, the authors explain, sell tiger parts on the black market, often for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Through its portrayal of tigers struggling for survival in a hostile world, Tigers Forever is both a call to action and an indictment of human greed.