Wild tigers are dying. There’s no other word for it. Their numbers have declined in the wild from perhaps 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, to more than 10,000 in the 1980s to less than 3,500 today. Their habitat in India, Russia, China and Southeast Asia has been carved up, their prey has been taken away from them and tigers …
Asia
Will Southeast Asia’s Hydro Rush Drown the Giant Catfish?
It’s hard to overstate the fever for hydroelectric power that has infected southeast Asia in recent years. Hydro power has more than tripled across the region since 1980, a growth that is pinned primarily to the mighty waters of the Mekong, the huge and powerful river that winds its way from the Tibetan–Qinghai Plateau, through …
Revisiting that Sinking Feeling
The conventional wisdom that Asia and the Pacific’s thousands of low-slung islands will be swimming with the fishes by the end of this century is getting a second look. A recent study of 27 Pacific islands featured in New Scientist reports that many — including the infamously doomed Tuvalu — have remained stable in size or even …