Research overview: Southeast Asian tiger range collapse and habitat drivers

Tiger range across Southeast Asia has collapsed dramatically, with several countries losing breeding populations to deforestation, infrastructure, and hunting. This overview surveys the regional pattern of habitat loss, comparing Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Indochina, and other landscapes, and the shared drivers of plantation expansion, road building, and poaching. It reviews how source-site conservation, protecting a network of intact, well-managed core areas, emerged as a response to range-wide decline. The synthesis frames Southeast Asia as the epicenter of tiger habitat loss, where land-use change has outpaced climate as the proximate threat, and explains why securing remaining forest blocks and prey is the foundation for any longer-term climate-resilient recovery.