an environment inhabited by tigers is, by definition, healthy. If there is enough land, cover, water, and game to support a keystone species like this, it implies that all the creatures beneath it are present and accounted for, and that the ecosystem is intact. In this sense, the tiger represents an enormous canary in the biological coal mine. Environments in which tigers have been wiped out are often damaged in other ways as well: the game is gone and, in many cases, the forests are, too.
