Research overview: prey depletion and the empty forest syndrome

Many structurally intact Asian forests now hold few or no tigers because their prey has been hunted out, a phenomenon known as the empty forest syndrome. This overview synthesizes evidence that unsustainable hunting of deer and wild pig strips forests of the large prey tigers need, so that even well-protected vegetation cannot support the cat. It reviews how prey depletion, compounded by direct poaching of tigers for illegal trade, has driven local extinctions across the range, and why prey recovery is often the limiting step in restoring tiger populations. The synthesis reframes tiger conservation as inseparable from prey conservation and the control of hunting. For enthusiasts it explains the sobering reality that a green, forested landscape can be functionally empty of large predators, and why effective protection must reach down the food chain to the herbivores tigers depend on.