The deer population has to be big enough to provide that much tiger food. If we take the math a little bit further, a deer population can produce a surplus of about 10% a year. Now if you keep working down the numbers you’ll see that the sustained 250 tigers, it’s going to take 125,000 deer. Now let’s consider how much land that requires and the other uses of that land and competition for the deer. This is a microcosm of the kind of problem that conservation deals with and all the larger predators and many other creatures as well.
