Research overview: tiger source-site strategy under habitat and climate pressure

Faced with range-wide decline, tiger conservation has emphasized protecting a network of source sites, well-managed core areas capable of producing surplus animals to repopulate surrounding land. This overview surveys the source-site framework, how sites were prioritized, and how the strategy intersects with habitat loss, climate change, and the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers. It reviews evidence of recovery where protection and prey are secured. The synthesis frames source sites as a pragmatic response to limited resources, explaining why concentrating effort on a set of defensible cores, while maintaining connectivity for longer-term and climate-driven range shifts, has become the backbone of tiger recovery across a fragmented, pressured Asian landscape.