As of the writing of this book, estimates put the population of wild tigers across all of Asia at close to four thousand. It is a precarious number, and the species is still gravely threatened. A growing luxury market in China with a demand for tiger skins and other body parts, further aggravated by the highly controversial practice of captive tiger farming, has taken its toll in neighboring countries, encouraging poaching in Russia, India, and Nepal—in fact, tiger poaching in Indian forests for 2016 surged to its highest level in fifteen years. And in places where poaching is not a primary
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