For the first time in over a year, two tiger cubs and their mother have been seen in the Valmiki Tiger Reserve.

Finally, some good news about tigers in India. As a brief respite from news of poaching and industrialized tiger cruelty, Valmiki Tiger Reserve has apparently welcomed two recent arrivals.

According to the Times of India, two tiger cubs - along with their mother - were seen in the Manpur area of the reserve. Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) personnel and villagers reported that they spotted the tiger family just last week.

Tiger cubs were last seen in Valmiki Tiger Reserve in March 2008, when they were caught on camera.

Earlier this month, Environmental Police in Vietnam found a frozen tiger and tiger bones in the back of a taxi cab. The tiger seems to have been a young one recently killed and the bones were of two adults, according to an expert at the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR).

One of India’s main tiger parks, Panna Tiger Reserve, has admitted that it has no tigers left.

Just three years ago the park had at least 24 tigers, but park officials have been either unable or unwilling to protect the animals from poaching. Even more discouraging, Panna is now the second tiger reserve in India where numbers have dwindled to zero.

Government officials in India recently revealed that plans are underway to reintroduce wild cheetahs to the country’s protected grasslands, where the animal has likely been extinct for over 60 years.

Cheetahs from Africa would be the likely imports, and millions of pounds are likely to be set aside for importing them and conserving them once they’ve arrived. A meeting of international experts will hash out the details of the budget this upcoming September in Rajasthan.

But with animal reserves currently in shoddy condition across India, is the reintroduction likely to be a success?

Tiger farming in China - breeding tigers for slaughter to sell body parts - denounced by World Bank.

The World Bank has debunked the notion that tiger farming could benefit conservation of the species and stated that tiger farming “could even drive wild tigers closer to extinction.”

Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of the species program at WWF, welcomes the World Bank’s support: “Stopping all trade in tiger parts, and phasing out these tiger farms, is of the utmost urgency if the tiger is to survive in the wild.”

World Bank Director, Keshav Varma added: “Commercial trading in tiger parts and its derivatives is not in the interest of wild tiger conservation.”

The Thai Navy arrested eight animal traffickers in possession of two tiger carcasses, both chopped in half, and 45 pangolins as they attempted to smuggle the animals across the Mekong River into Lao PDF.

1. Iberian Lynx

The Iberian (Spanish), Lynx lives in very small areas of central and southern Spain (Andalucia). It  used to live throughout Spain and Portugal but its numbers have been drastically reduced to the point where it is now one of the most endangered wild cats in the world.

In the early 1950s a virus named Myxomatosis was illegally introduced by a French scientist to wild rabbits on his estate to protect his vegetable patch. Tragically the virus spread rapidly, and killed about 90% of the wild rabbits in France.  Spanish rabbits also died  in huge numbers even going completely missing in some areas,  so thousands of lynx starved to death. Habitat loss, hunting and trapping also have decimated the lynx. They are protected now, but they still get caught in fox traps.  Another cause of death recently is getting hit by cars in Donana National Park.

Eyes on the Forest, a conservation coalition, has released a research report on the clash between commercial logging and Sumatran tigers living in forests clear cut by the paper industry.

Their analysis shows that most of the tiger - human violence occurring in Sumatra has taken place near areas being deforested by Asia Pulp and Paper. Over the last 12 years, 55 people and 15 critically endangered Sumatran tigers have lost their lives in the violence. Seventeen of the tigers have been captured alive.

For many Malays and Thais, the tourist income generated by bringing people to see animals in their natural habitat doesn’t trickle down as far and as fast as selling bush-meat, skins and organs for traditional medicines, which generates instant cash-in-hand at the expense of the animal population’s future stability.

More than fifteen thousand people have taken part in a mass protest in southern India, against the extension of a new reserve to protect tigers facing a very real threat of extinction.

The last count revealed that the number of Indian tigers has plummeted from around 40,000 at the beginning of last century to an all time low of just 1,411, largely due to dwindling habitats and the activities of poachers. Despite these depressing statistics, residents of India’s Chennai region are firmly against any further safeguards, fearing that they will lose their homes if an extension to the Mudumalai Wildlife sanctuary is given the green light.

“Long ago, when tigers smoked long pipes… ” begin folk tales in South Korea. The stories recall a time at the farthest reaches of living memory when Korean tigers, the world’s largest cats, still prowled the Korean peninsula.

Korea’s national creation myth also tells of a tiger and a bear who asked the son of the ruler of Heaven if he would make them human. He agreed, but only if they could endure 100 days in a cave eating nothing but garlic and mugwort. The steadfast bear endured and became a beautiful woman, who gave birth to Tangun, the legendary father of Korea in 2333 BCE. But the tiger grew hungry and impatient. He left the cave early, unable cope with the hunger and waiting, and has been slinking through the Korean mountains ever since.

That is, until the last century when hunting and habitat loss pushed the Korean tiger over the brink of extinction in the wild in South Korea. With it went an important symbol of Korea’s identity.