Research overview: the Global Tiger Recovery Program

Adopted at the 2010 St. Petersburg summit, the Global Tiger Recovery Program coordinated commitments from the thirteen tiger range countries around the goal of doubling wild tigers. This overview surveys the program's structure and the science used to track it, including national tiger action plans, standardized monitoring, and prioritization of source sites and corridors. Researchers assessed which countries advanced and which fell behind, linking outcomes to enforcement, prey recovery, and political commitment. The program institutionalized international funding mechanisms and reporting, while also drawing critique for uneven implementation and data comparability across nations. The overview considers the recovery program as a rare example of high-level political mobilization around a single species, examining both what coordinated global ambition achieved and the structural gaps that left some landscapes continuing to lose their tigers.