status and threats.

Tigers are facing extinction. The South China tiger may already be extinct. Numbers of other subspecies are very low. One major threat is that in some countries medicines made of tiger body parts are considered to be almost magical in their effect. Tigers are killed for body parts, fur and meat. Although there is an international ban on killing tigers, the illegal medicines sell for large sums of money, so poachers continue to hunt tigers. Loss of habitat is also a big threat, and there is less and less space in the wild for tigers to live. What is left of wild habitat is often small patches, like islands, which makes it hard for tigers to move about and meet each other for breeding.