Large predators around the world are threatened by habitat loss and encroaching humanity. It’s probably just a matter of time before one or more of them goes extinct, and right now the odds are looking like tigers could be the next to go.

An animal that is more valuable dead than alive; an animal that is projected by doomsayers to be totally extinct within the next 15 years — experts and policymakers got together in Kathmandu yesterday to find a way of saving it — the tiger.

Challenges are quite enormous, figures quoted in the Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop revealed. There are now about only 3,200 tigers in the wild compared to some 1,00,000 a century ago, and every year fresh news of bereavement are coming — only a few months ago it was reported that Panna reserve of Madhya Pradesh lost all its 38 tigers to poachers.

Tigers are also finding their ranges squeezed from every corner. Today they occupy only 7 percent of their historic range and use 40 percent less area than in 1997.

Worst of all, trade in tiger parts is booming, now accounting for about $10 billion –second only to drugs and weapons trade in Asia.

With all those factors playing a hand, it’s a pretty good bet that, for children born today, tigers will either be only alive in zoos, or gone forever, and the world will be a sadder place for it. How valuable will a dead tiger be then?