Photos by stevewinterphoto | Today is Global Tiger Day! Tigers are the most endangered big cat species on Earth. They deserve to be saved based on their sheer majesty alone, but there's also a broader reason to stop their slide toward extinction: It will also help us save ourselves. Preserving huge tracts of forest, wetlands, and jungle for tigers has a ripple effect for the globe. Those forests pull carbon from the atmosphere and slow climate change. Forests provide oxygen and purify the rivers running through them, a freshwater supply that feeds our faucets. In saving tigers, we preserve the spectrum of life that shares their realm—ecosystems that have been fine-tuned over millennia. These tigers are mostly from India's Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, except for the final image which was taken in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the world’s largest wetland, now threatened by rising sea levels. #worldtigerday #tigers