There are less than 4,500 tigers in the wild with over 5,000 captive in the United States.
Tigers in the United States are currently regulated by a combo of federal, state, and local laws. According to the World Wildlife Fund, no one government agency monitors and tracks where these tigers are, who owns them, when they’re sold and traded, or what happens to the tigers when they die. Nor are there central measures regulating the illegal tiger trade that threatens wild tigers, the welfare of captive tigers, or public safety.