Could the vanished Caspian tiger make a comeback?

[TomSea]

Could the vanished Caspian tiger make a comeback?

By Ethan Shaw January 24 2017

Once upon a time, a walk through a shady floodplain forest in northern Iran or southern Kazakhstan might have landed you some face-time with a tiger.

That thrilling if terrifying possibility no longer exists, but a new scientific assessment suggests that Panthera tigris could once again occupy at least a little portion of this most northwesterly reach of its historic distribution.

Specifically, we're talking here about the vanished Caspian tiger, which – along with the Amur and Bengal subspecies – was among the heftiest of its kind: a big male could tip the scales well beyond 500 pounds.

The Caspian tiger once roamed many thousands of square miles between eastern Turkey and northwestern China, where it haunted reed jungles and gallery forests called tugai composed of water-loving trees and shrubs. In these mucky wildernesses – surrounded in many places by arid steppes and mountains – the big, bearded tiger stalked Bactrian deer, roe deer and wild boar.

Continued: http://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservation/conservation/could-the-vanished-caspian-tiger-make-a-comeback