'Miracle predator' caught on camera — tigers are making a comeback

"A truly wild tiger has appeared."

Tigers, the apex predators of forest ecosystems, have long been pushed to the brink of extinction through relentless poaching and illegal trade.

Korea is no exception. The tigers that once roamed the Korean Peninsula vanished long ago. Globally, more than 95 percent of the world's tiger population has disappeared over just the past century.

Spotting a tiger in the wild has been considered nearly impossible — yet recent years have brought a string of camera sightings as populations begin to recover.

Decades of global conservation efforts are beginning to show results.

Some may question why tiger conservation matters. But the cause carries meaning that goes far beyond simply saving a single species.

Revered in Korean tradition as the "mountain spirit," tigers play an outsized role in forest ecosystems. Experts stress that protecting tigers ultimately means protecting not just animals and nature, but people as well.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), tigers are currently listed as "Endangered" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. In South Korea, they are designated as a Class 1 endangered wild animal. In plain terms, wild tigers could disappear entirely within the foreseeable future.

Humans are the primary cause of the population decline. Tigers have long been targeted by poachers and traffickers drawn to their powerful image and striking stripes. In parts of Asia, illegal trade in tiger skins and body parts — used as ornaments or ingredients in traditional medicine — continues to this day.

A report published last year by TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network, found that 2,551 tiger-related seizure cases were recorded worldwide between 2000 and June 2025. When confiscated tigers and body parts are converted into individual animals, the total amounts to at least 3,808 tigers.

The situation has not improved in recent years. From 2020 to June 2025 — a span of roughly five and a half years — 573 tigers were seized, an average of nine per month. Cases involving the seizure of a whole tiger, alive or dead, are also on the rise alongside those involving only skins or bones.

Tiger farms operating for the illegal trade have compounded the crisis. Deforestation and habitat destruction have made survival even harder. As tigers lose their habitat and venture into human settlements, retaliatory killings and poaching create a vicious cycle that further threatens the species.

WWF says wild tiger numbers have fallen by roughly 95 percent over the past 150 years. In 2010, the global wild tiger population hit an all-time low of about 3,200 — down from an estimated 100,000.

The trend reversed after 2010. The turning point was the TX2 (Tiger Times Two) project, launched at the 2010 Tiger Summit, where 13 tiger-range countries gathered and committed to doubling wild tiger populations by 2022. Working alongside governments and civil society groups, they pursued stricter anti-poaching enforcement and habitat protection.

As a result, the global wild tiger population — which had fallen to about 3,200 in 2010 — recovered to roughly 5,574 by 2023. Conservation efforts are now focused on a new strategy targeting 2034, with work underway to expand wild tiger populations and habitats across 22 key conservation areas.

With populations recovering, wild tiger sightings have become more frequent. Last November, a large family of Siberian tigers was captured on camera in the Hunchun nature reserve within the Baekdu Mountain ecosystem, drawing wide attention. The footage showed a mother with five cubs — an exceptionally rare sight.

The Siberian tiger is the species Koreans call the "Baekdu Mountain tiger." It once inhabited the mountainous regions of the Korean Peninsula, including Mount Baekdu. Logging during the Japanese colonial period reduced its prey base, and large-scale culling policies drove it to extinction on the peninsula. In China, the population had also fallen to fewer than 20 individuals around 2010, putting the subspecies on the verge of local disappearance.

Since the 2010s, active protection policies have driven a recovery. About 70 wild tigers now live in Chinese national parks.

The international community's investment in tiger conservation stems from the animal's critical role as an apex predator. Tigers are what ecologists call an "umbrella species" — protecting them safeguards the broader ecosystem and the many other wild animals that share their habitat.

WWF says protecting a single tiger requires conserving roughly 10,000 hectares of forest — about one-sixth the total area of Seoul.

Tiger habitats also overlap with nine of Asia's most important river basins, which supply water to more than 800 million people. Protecting tigers, in other words, means protecting the drinking water sources and forests that countless people depend on.

Tiger population recovery is progressing, but conservationists say it is too soon to be complacent. Tiger protection groups say greater public attention is still needed to pull the species back from the edge of extinction. WWF Korea runs a campaign called "Happy Anniversary" to help citizens engage with global tiger conservation in their daily lives.

"The Happy Anniversary campaign spotlights endangered animals on the occasion of animal commemorative days, and has chosen the tiger as its featured species from July through September this year," a WWF Korea official said. "We have protected tigers as a flagship conservation species since the 1960s, and we will continue our tiger conservation work toward a future where healthy forests, biodiversity, and people and nature can coexist."