Reason(s) for failure of establishing captive zoo population of Bengal tigers?

Really? I didn't know about that. I thought that the Bengal tigers are most common tiger subspecie in captivity. Even Brazil that has a few tigers have Bengal tigers (I think that we just have Bengals and Siberians).

Maybe I'll say something stupid (maybe I already said something stupid ), but I'll give my opinion according to what I know (I didn't read all the reviews, so maybe someone has already mentioned this):

Maybe the Bengal tigers were very common in zoos, so the zoos that have enough money to do it, start to house rarer tiger subspecies. Since usually the zoos in aim to reproduce choose the most endangered and rare animals, other subspecies of tigers began to grow faster than the Bengal tigers (usually obtained by zoos without the aim of reproduction).

 

.........zoo population of Bengal Tigers

What happened in pre-stud book days, was that Indian ('Bengal') Tigers were crossed with Amur ('Siberian') to produce bigger and more impressive Tigers. This was even done when outcrossing the whites to get new blood. This is part of the reason that white tigers are of no conservation value. Not only are they inbred, and a colour mutation with a lot of attendant health issues, but they are all subspecific hybrids.

 

I believe this happened earliest and most freely in the USA. Washington in the USA was the first zoo to receive a White tiger from the Rewa stock in India but not long afterward White cub(s) were also produced from an entirely unrelated pair of normal orange tigers in an American circus. I think both strains later contributed to the explosion of whites in the US. And later crossing with Siberians began to result in the creation of the bigger shaggy-coated generic white tigers that became popular and then starting also appearing in places like Japan and elsewhere.

In the UK I think the first outcrossing/mixing with Siberians may have occurred at Longleat, the white gene having been derived from white or 'split' tigers originally from Bristol. Compared to the USA there have been far fewer in zoos/safari parks over here.