Caspian tiger

The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata), also known as the Hyrcanian tiger, the Mazandaran tiger, the Persian tiger and the Turan tiger, is an extinct tiger subspeciesthat had been recorded in the wild until the early 1970s, and formerly inhabited the sparse forest habitats and riverine corridors west and south of the Caspian Sea, fromTurkey, Iran and east through Central Asia into the Takla Makan desert of Xinjiang, China. There are no individuals in captivity.

The Caspian tiger was formerly found in Chinese and Russian Turkestan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey.The Caspian tiger together with the Siberian and Bengal tiger subspecies represented the largest living cat and ranked among the biggest cats that ever existed.

he body of Caspian tigers was generally less massive than of Siberian tigers, and their average size slightly less. In Turkestan, male tigers exceeded 200 cm (79 in) in length, though an estimated body length of 270 cm (110 in) was recorded. Females were smaller in size, normally ranging between 160 to 180 cm (63 to 71 in). The maximum known weight was 240 kg (530 lb). Maximum skull length in males was 297.0 to 365.8 mm (11.69 to 14.40 in), while that of females was 195.7 to 255.5 mm (7.70 to 10.06 in). Although tigers from Turkestan never reached the size of Siberian tigers, there are records of very large individuals. In January 1954, a tiger killed near theSumbar River in Kopet-Dag had a skull length of 385 mm (15.2 in), which is considerably more than the known maximum for this population and slightly exceeds that of most Siberian tigers.

In Iraq, the only reported Caspian tiger was killed near Mosul in 1887. The last known tiger in the Caucasus region was killed in 1922 near Tbilisi, Georgia, after taking domestic livestock. They disappeared from the Tarim River basin in Xinjiang in the 1920s. In Kazakhstan, the last tiger was recorded in 1948 in the environs of the Ili River, their last stronghold in the region of Lake Balkhash. In Turkmenistan, the last tiger was killed in January 1954 in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet-Dag Range. In Iran's Golestān Province, one of the last tigers was shot in 1953; one individual was sighted in the area in 1958.^[17] In the Tian Shan mountains west of Ürümqi in China, the last Caspian tigers disappeared from the Manasi River basin in the 1960s. The last record from the lower reaches of the Amu-Darya river near the Aral Sea was an unconfirmed observation near Nukus in 1968. By the early 1970s, tigers disappeared from the river’s lower reaches and the Pyzandh Valley in the Turkmen-Uzbek-Afghan border region.^[4]

There are claims of a documented killing of a tiger at Uludere, Hakkari in Turkey in 1970. Questionnaire surveys conducted in southeastern Turkey revealed one to eight tigers were killed each year in eastern Turkey until the mid-1980s, and tigers likely had survived in the region until the early 1990s. Due to lack of interest, in addition to security and safety reasons, no further field surveys were carried out in the area.

Last efforts to save Caspian tigers from extinction

In 1938, the first protected area Tigrovaya Balka, "tiger former river channel", was established in Tajikistan. The name was given to this zapovednik after a tiger had attacked two Russian Army officers riding horseback along a dried-up river channel called balka. Tigrovaya Balka was the last stronghold of Caspian tigers in the Soviet Union, and is situated in the lower reaches of Vakhsh River between the Piandj andKofarnihon River near the border of Afghanistan. The last Caspian tiger was seen there in 1958.

Since 1947, tigers were legally protected in the USSR

In Iran, Caspian tigers have been protected since 1957, with heavy fines for shooting. In the early 1970s, biologists from the Iran Department of the Environment searched several years for Caspian tigers in the uninhabited areas of Caspian forests, but did not find any evidence of their presence.

Comparative illustration of the stripe patterns on the tails of Caspian (left) and Siberian tigers (right).