White Bengal Tigers are Bengal tigers that are white with gray stripes. Most species of tigers have white individuals, but the most common are Bengals. White tigers once existed in the wild, but the last wild white tiger was seen in 1958. The genes that cause white tigers have vanished from wild populations as the have shrunken vastly in
recent decades.
However, a number of white tigers exist in captivity, the descendants of wild white tigers that were captured. In order for a tiger to be white, it has to have two copies of the gene for whiteness. This means that in order to be sure of getting a white tiger, breeders must breed two white tigers. This means that many breeders inbreed their white tigers in order to get more of the valuable white ones. This is much easier that trying to find unrelated white tigers to breed, but causes the animals to be inbred; the tigers have unusually large numbers of double-recessive genes, and little genetic variety. These white tigers are less healthy than non-inbred tigers and can have diseases, deformities, and decreased fertility.
However, there is nothing inherently unhealthy about tigers with the white gene; it does occur naturally. White tigers are unhealthy only because humans interfere with tiger breeding to produce more white tigers than would naturally occur. Some non-inbred white tigers do exist, as well as inbred orange tigers with health problems.
Because of the excessive inbreeding practiced on white tigers, some groups oppose the breeding of any white tigers. The opposition is usually grounds that it is unhealthy for them to exist, that they are bred at the expense of breeding healthy orange tigers, and that selective breeding for the white genes is detrimental to the genetic diversity of all captive tigers. Maintaining genetic diversity amount captive tigers is considered important because wild populations are declining and could vanish.