There are 38 species of cats on the planet. Most, like the margay, are relatively small. But some—the lion, tiger, leopard, snow leopard, clouded leopard, jaguar, lynx, and cheetah—are big. These big cats are among the most beloved and recognizable animals on the planet. Most big cats are members of the genus Panthera. Small and medium cats, including housecats, are member of Felis. Cheetahs, which do not have retractable claws, are in their own genus, called Acinonyx. Big cats are found around the world in habitats as varied as mangrove swamps in India to wooded forests in the western U.S.

The main difference between big cats and most of their cousins is in the noises they make. Smaller cats purr; big cats (with the exception of cheetahs, lynx, and snow leopards) roar. They also squeak, grunt, scream, and make several other sounds, thanks to a ligament in their voice boxes. The lion’s roar is the most famous and can be heard up to five miles away because of the specialized structure of its vocal chords, a characteristic it shares with the tiger. Lions are the only big cats that live in groups, called prides. Lionesses hunt together, bringing down large prey like wildebeests and zebras. All other big cats live solitary lives, with the exception of mothers and cubs. Some, like the snow leopard, are especially elusive and rarely seen.

The largest big cat is the Siberian tiger, which can weigh an astonishing 660 pounds and stretch more than 10 feet nose to tail. It is one of six surviving tiger subspecies. Tigers have been hunted extensively as trophies and for use in traditional Chinese medicine and are listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List. As apex predators, big cats are bellwethers for their ecosystems. If they’re doing well, the ecosystem is doing well, and vice versa. As a whole, big cats are under increasing threats from poaching, habitat loss, and other environmental factors.

Around the world, big cats are among the most recognized and admired animals, at the top of the food chain. Yet all seven species are listed as Threatened or Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, with the tiger categorized as Endangered. WCS is in a unique position to help—we work to conserve all seven.

Global Tiger Day was born in year 2010 when all 13 tiger range nations met in St. Petersburg, Russia where for the first time global leaders came together to help safeguard the future of dwindling population of wild tigers of the world. This was the most ambitious and first international conservation initiative that has ever undertaken to recover globally threatened single species from its extinction crises in the wild. Tigers are the most iconic and charismatic mega fauna that our pale blue planet given rise from its inception roughly 5 billion years ago. The concern for dramatic tiger population decline is not new and four years prior to St. Petersburg Tiger Conference, in year 2006, Tiger Forever Project was born. Led by world’s top wildlife ecologists and carnivore conservationists, Tiger Forever Project is most prestigious and effective single species global conservation recovery program created by Panthera – The Global Wild Cat Conservation Organization called Panthera. Panthera is the only scientific and conservation organization on earth that is dedicated to help safeguard all 40 species of wild cats across the hemisphere. Wild tigers, the critically endangered species that even after fifty years of global conservation efforts and millions of dollars investment, faced with multiple level of threats which led to 95% of its global population decline across its home range in tropical ecosystems in South and South East Asia. Against the backdrop of 11th International Tiger Day, renewing our commitments and dedication through concerted science bound conservation initiatives, education and actions towards protecting this beautiful mega-vertebrate that now inhabits in fragmented, human-dominated agricultural bound pockets of ecologically threatened yet biologically most diverse hotspots in Asia should be at the heart of every concerned tiger conservationists and tiger lovers across the globe.

As early as 1900, there were over 100,000 tigers with its 8 putative subspecies roamed across vast wilderness of Asian landscapes ranging from as far west as Turkey and Iran and far east as Japan and North Korea. This mammoth historical population now shrunk to mere 3800 tigers with 97% of its range now either vanished or converted to agricultural pasture to feed burgeoning human population across the globe.