pig range underwent a rapid decline between the middle of the 19th century and the 1930s due to overhunting, natural disasters, and diseases such as swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease, which caused large and rapid die-offs. The extensive reed beds of tiger habitat were increasingly converted to cropland for planting cotton and other crops that grew well in the rich silt along rivers. The tiger was already vulnerable due to the restricted nature of its distribution, having been confined to watercourses within the large expanses of desert environment. Until the early 20th century, the regular Russian army was used to clear predators from forests, around settlements, and potential agricultural lands. Until World War I, about 50 tigers were killed in the forests of Amu Darya and Piandj Rivers each year. High incentives were paid for tiger skins up to 1929. Wild pigs and deer, the prey base of tigers, were decimated by deforestation and subsistence hunting by the increasing human population along the rivers, supported by growing agricultural developments. By 1910, cotton plants were estimated to occupy nearly one-fifth of Turkestan's arable land, with about one half located in the Fergana Valley. Last sightings In Iraq, a tiger was killed near Mosul in 1887. In Georgia, the last known tiger was killed in 1922 near Tbilisi, after taking domestic livestock. In China, tigers disappeared from the Tarim River basin in Xinjiang in the 1920s. They reportedly disappeared from the Manasi River basin in the Tian Shan Range west of Ürümqi in the 1960s. In Turkey, a pair of tigers was allegedly killed in the area of Selçuk in 1943. Several tiger skins found in the early 1970s near Uludere indicated the presence of a tiger population in eastern Turkey. Questionnaire surveys conducted in this region revealed that one to eight tigers were killed each year until the mid-1980s, and that tigers likely had survived in the region until the early 1990s. Due to lack of interest, in addition to security and safety reasons, no further field surveys were carried out in the area. In Azerbaijan, the last known tiger was killed in 1932; however, there were alleged sightings in the Talysh Mountains in later years. In Iran, one of the last known tigers was shot in Golestan National Park in 1953. Another individual was sighted in the Golestan area in 1958. In Turkmenistan, the last known tiger was killed in