July 29 was Global Tiger Day, and in celebration, the World Wildlife Fund shared some disturbing stats on the animal.

A report released by WWF yesterday according to EFE says there are more tigers living in captivity in the United States than there are in the wild. There are an estimated 5,000 tigers in the U.S. and about 3,200, as calculated at the 2010 St. Petersburg Tiger Summit, in its natural habitat.

"This figure was just an estimate," Michael Baltzer, leader of WWF Tigers Alive Initiative, said Tuesday through a press release. "In 2010 many countries had not undertaken systematic national tiger surveys. Now many have or are doing so, but not all, leaving major, worrying gaps in our knowledge. Until we know how many tigers we have and where they are, we can't know how best to protect them."

Poaching is reportedly the biggest threat to tigers, as the criminals seek every part of the animal "from whisker to tail," the WWF said in its report.

"In relentless demand, their parts are used for traditional medicine, folk remedies, and increasingly as a status symbol among some Asian cultures," the report explains.

Habitat loss and climate change are also cited threats.

According to TRAFFIC statistics cited by the press release, an average of two tigers per week were poached between January 2000 and April 2014, for a minimum total of 1,590 tigers. Again, data from some countries, including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand, are not available.

The endangered tiger's population has decreased 97 percent in the past 100 years. At the 2010 Tiger Summit, a goal, dubbed "Tx2," was established to double the amount of tigers in the wild by 2022.

"We are more than a third of the way to 2022," Baltzer continued. "We need to move at a faster, more determined pace if we hope to achieve the Tx2 goal."

The WWF is working with the 13 tiger range countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to EFE) who committed to the goal by helping them "respect wild tigers as a valuable asset that can enhance their development agenda ... [and by] linking tiger conservation with forest preservation and carbon-sequestration efforts."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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