ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[Brehm]

Excellent topic, i really enjoyed reading this thread since a year :)

To add something on the tiger - wolf interaction in the russian far east, i found a study regarding to this:

https://books.google.at/books?id=ndb0QOv...&q&f=false

A book called "Large Carnivores and the Conservation of Biodiversity"

with a chapter called

"Tigers and Wolves in the Russian Far East: Competitive Exclusion, Functional Redundancy and Conservation Implications"

I found this accidently on wikipedia, as reference for interaction between tigers and other carnivores. Sometimes i read wiki articles, to see if they adapted the newest level of research. I was quite surprised...
Some table scans from the book:

*This image is copyright of its original author

 

*This image is copyright of its original author

In summary, from what I've understood after reading this, tigers limited wolf numbers due to competition about similiar prey and direct interspecific conflict.

At the end of page 188 it's written:

Accounts of historical shifts in the abundance of tigers and wolves are especially well documented in the Zapovedniks, where long term monitoring has been conducted. For instance, in Lazovski Zapodnik, Bromley (1935) reported that, although wolves were formerly absent, 105 wolves "had to be destroyed" in the 1940's, coincident with the low density of tigers. Wolf numbers declined consitently from the 1960's to the 1980's, at the same time as tiger population were recovering in the reserve. Wolf tracks rarely observed in the 1990's, and no tracks were registered in 1992 and 1993, where tiger numbers were high and stable (Khramtsov 1995).

In a time confronted with habitat loss and limited prey items, it sounds convincing, that wolves suffer a similiar effect from tigers like african wild dog's do from lions (officialy).

Is it possible, that in old days (like the times of Velter) the coexistence between tigers and wolves was perhaps a result of better environmental conditions? It sounds logical, but i don't know the conditions from those days...

Apart from that, are there any documented interactions between Bengal tigers and tibetan wolves from the past? Sadly, in places where both share the same habitat, either wolves or tigers became very rare, like Nampdapha or Manas on the Bhutan part.

 

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