In reeds tinged red in the Central Asian sun, a tiger once roamed. There, in riparian forests that line rivers like the Vakhsh in the former Soviet country of Tajikistan, the Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) prowled, awaiting the passage of a wild boar or Bukhara deer. Although still a matter of debate, the final wild Caspian tiger may have been killed in February, 1970, shot in Hakkari Province, Turkey. New DNA evidence, however, has added a hopeful postscript to this seemingly tragic tale.
In the early 20th century, the Russian government instructed its army to exterminate all tigers as part of a land reclamation project across Central Asia. Once Caspian tigers were almost gone, farmers moved in, clearing wetlands and forests and planting crops like cotton. The tigers retreated, first from lowland streams and finally from marshes around larger rivers.
Carlos Driscoll, a biologist at the University of Oxford’s ...
