The last year of the tiger? Human predators threaten mighty hunter

One of the most beautiful creatures on the planet, the tiger is feared and revered in equal measure. Yet it has been brought close to extinction, in part by the appetite of China and its neighbours for all things "tiger".

Chinese superstition is one of the primary reasons behind the tiger poaching since it creates a huge demand for tiger skins, genitals, bones, teeth and nails.

A recent report in the Indian Economic Times claims that Chinese superstition is the "biggest threat to tiger conservation". It warns that during the Year of the Tiger, sales of tiger goods are likely to rise considerably.

In India, I visited the three main national parks of Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Ranthambore, where tiger populations are reported to

be steady. During my stay I enjoyed 24 sightings of 16 different tigers over a three- week period and so to the tourist's eye, all seemed well. But, as with so much in India, the reality is very different. The Wildlife Institute of India estimated a maximum population of 1,600 and reports only marginal increases within the National Parks.

You watch tigers on television documentaries, but nothing prepares you for seeing the three-metre length of the animal glide effortlessly by you. It made quite an impression, as did the deep scores that its claws had left over three metres up on a tree used as a scratching post.

Seeing a tiger felt surreal. But that may have had more to do with the fact that I was perched on the back of an elephant at the time and the mahout kept asking for a cash advance to see the tiger for a little bit longer.

It was certainly a far cry from my usual peaceful wildlife sightings on the Yorkshire Wolds. But it was India after all – where anything can happen.

Poverty is everywhere in India and the sheer rawness of it is a real shock. On top of that, the effects of the poverty on the landscape were dramatic. In some places oddly-shaped dead tree stumps are all that are left to remind you of the forests that once prospered. These have gone to provide firewood to a desperate population.

The national parks meanwhile are lushly forested and flow with clean water. To travel between the two was a bizarre experience. Nowhere was this more apparent than between the dusty shanty town of the village of Sawai Madhopur and the adjacent Ranthambore National Park.

Locals will proudly tell you it's "Where Bill Clinton came", not that this in itself appears to have done any good.

Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan is a jewel of a national park, with vast lakes, dramatically ruined temples and palaces, densely forested areas and deep gorges. It was here I had one of the most spectacular wildlife-watching moments of my life.

My wife and I had hired a driver to guide us through the park and after bumping along the dusty roads for days in sweltering 45 degree heat, we had had no sightings of tigers. We paused under a tree in the shade to think up a new plan for our tiger hunt. The scenery was breathtaking. Below us was a lake covered in water lilies and beyond it a distant temple slowly being enveloped by the surrounding forest.

As gazed at the temple I spotted a tiger looking out of one of the arches. I grabbed my binoculars to confirm the sighting. "Tiger, tiger, tiger" the driver shouted, leaping around the jeep excitedly in a most peculiar fashion.

This tigress was a long way off and protected from the noise, fortunately, by the vast stretch of water between us. She surveyed the scene nonchalantly. Some distance away, a group of samba deer munched waist deep in the lake on tender water lily stems. As the deer moved unwittingly towards the tiger, a flash of mischief flickered across this predator's eyes, and I knew: she was going to have a go at hunting.

Moments later, she swirled around in excitement, and then reappeared in the archway. She leapt down from the temple and charged through the water towards the samba, which scattered.

Both deer and the tiger were encumbered by the deep water. It was as if it was all happening in slow motion.

The tiger singled out an individual and steered it towards a rocky causeway which separated the lake in half.

She pursued the samba with great gusto for 100 metres or so. But just when she was a whisker away from an easy meal, she missed her footing and stumbled. She had let her prey get away, and was clearly disgruntled, flicking her tail angrily at her clumsiness and glancing back to see where she had gone wrong.

Our guide had continued to jump up and down and shout "tiger, tiger, tiger" throughout the sighting, which had made getting these photographs even more challenging.

The strength and power of that tiger was breathtaking to watch. Yet the animals' vulnerability was exposed on arrival back in the UK when I read that the population in Ranthambore had dropped dramatically to just 26 individuals from a high of 44 a few years earlier.

Since my encounter with that tiger I have donated 5 from every print of a tiger print that I sell to the David Shepherd Wildlife Conservation Project. I've raised over 3,000 already, but it's a drop in the ocean.

The answer may lie in Africa. Here conservationists have been weighing up the crisis of endangered wildlife in the face of human poverty for years, with some success. Across Africa there are initiatives to make the wildlife benefit rural people and I believe that this is the key to conservation in India.

The African conservationist Jon Varty has had the idea of creating a self-sustaining population of tigers inside and outside Asia in large tracts of land protected from poachers.

His own 18-strong tiger population live in Tiger Canyons near Philippolis on the Van der Kloof Lake in the Karoo of South Africa.

Here the tigers roam and hunt freely and are protected. Varty plans to transfer his tigers to India when land and infrastructure permits. In some ways his plan is flawed as he seems to be breeding a cross species of Siberian and Bengal tigers.

But the scale of its ambition is heartening. Fingers crossed, 2010, the Year of the Tiger, will proves to be a good one for this magnificent predator.