🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Wildlife corridors have been shown in multiple large carnivore studies to significantly increase gene flow between fragmented populations.
Small, isolated populations face what conservation biologists call genetic bottlenecks. When numbers drop below sustainable thresholds, inbreeding reduces fertility and increases susceptibility to disease. Research on fragmented tiger landscapes in Sumatra has shown declining gene flow between reserves. Without dispersal corridors, young males cannot establish new territories beyond protected boundaries. Over time, related individuals breed within the same forest blocks. Genetic diversity, the raw material of adaptation, shrinks. Even if poaching stopped completely, isolation alone can undermine recovery. The threat is invisible but measurable in DNA.
💥 Impact (click to read)
Genetic erosion operates quietly compared to chainsaws or snares, but its consequences are systemic. Reduced diversity can lower cub survival rates and compromise immune resilience. In a species with already low numbers, even minor decreases in reproductive success matter. Conservation strategies increasingly prioritize landscape connectivity, not just protected area size. Building corridors may involve negotiating land rights, relocating settlements, or altering plantation boundaries. These are political decisions with economic trade-offs. The biology of one predator thus collides with infrastructure planning and agricultural policy.
For the tiger, territory is not symbolic; it is survival mathematics. A female may raise only a handful of litters in her lifetime. If cub mortality rises because of inbreeding depression, population recovery stalls for years. The public often imagines extinction as a sudden event, but it more commonly unfolds as a slow genetic narrowing. By the time visible symptoms appear, reversal is difficult. The idea that a forest can look intact yet be genetically doomed is one of conservation’s quieter paradoxes.
💬 Comments