BHUBANESWAR, India -- Coal mining for electricity generation is the biggest threat to India's tigers, a report by environmental activists Greenpeace warned, demanding a moratorium on clearances for new mines just days after massive blackouts highlighted power shortages.

A hot-button issue in India, tiger conservation pits the desire to preserve wildlife against the development needs of a country that in March witnessed its slowest economic growth rate in nine years and where hundreds of millions continue to live below poverty line.

India is home to more than half of the world's tigers, with 1,706 living in the wild, compared to 100,000 at the turn of the last century. The International Union for Conservative of Nature estimates between 3,000 and 4,000 tigers live in the wild anywhere in the world.

Report warns of 'stark' situation
The emerging Asian power has witnessed an unprecedented hike in new coal mines and coal-run power plants in the past five years, placing the lives of many endangered animals at risk, the report released late Wednesday said.

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Calling the situation "stark," Greenpeace says coal mining has already started affecting tigers in many areas such as Chandrapur in the state of Maharashtra.

"But there are other locations where the problem is already, or will soon be, equally severe," Greenpeace campaigner Ashish Fernandes told Reuters.

Reeling from the two blackouts this week and an ongoing shortage of power, the Indian government is under great pressure to mine more coal to meet a soaring demand for energy.

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Greenpeace called for greater investment in renewable energy, especially wind and solar power.

Extensive coal reserves
Frequent power outages are seen as a major constraint to faster economic growth, putting pressure on the Indian government to permit the development of coal mines.

India's top court bans tourism in tiger parks

"The government continues to clear coal power projects and mines way beyond requirements, often overriding the objections of its officials and committees. We are asking for an immediate moratorium on all new forest clearances, until the criteria for determining forests off limits to mining are agreed upon and implemented, with proper public consultation and input," The Times of India quoted National Board for Wildlife member Biswajit Mohanty as saying.

India sits on the world's fifth-largest coal reserves, and produces the most after China and the United States.

The report says if India continues its dependence on coal to meet its energy needs, the destruction already seen in these areas will multiply across much of central India, which has 80 percent of the country's coal reserves and 35 per cent of its tigers.

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Tourism banned in 'core' tiger habitats
Last month, in a move to protect the endangered cats, the Supreme Court in India ordered a ban on tourism in "core zones" of more than 40 of the country's tiger reserves.

The order will effectively extinguish tourism at some reserves, while hardly touching other ones at all, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

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At the approximately 150-square-mile Ranthambore National Park, in the northwest of the country, tourism was expected virtually to cease altogether. The reserve, home to around 30 tigers, attracts an estimated 70,000 foreign and 150,000 domestic tourists last year, according to the Journal.

Aditya Singh / AFP - Getty Images, file

A tiger yawns at the Ranthambore National Park, in India's northwestern Rajasthan state, in January 2004.

But under the new ruling, tourists would effectively be barred from the park and revenues would dry up, the paper reported.

The government has for decades been fighting a losing battle to conserve tiger numbers against poaching, which feeds a lucrative cross-border trade in tiger body parts, and the loss of natural habitat.

Read the full Greenpeace report on tigers in India

Reuters and NBC News staff contributed to this report.

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Archibald D'mello via AP

Violet D'Mello of Scotland was attacked by two young cheetahs in the petting area of the Kragga Kamma Game Park near Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Her husband captured the attack on camera. When Michelle Bodenheimer of Portland, Ore. heard about the attack, she was furious -- those same two cheetahs injured her three years before.

After a Scottish tourist was mauled last week by two young cheetahs in the petting area of a wildlife park in South Africa, an American woman came forward to say she was badly hurt by the same two cheetahs in 2009.

Michelle Bodenheimer, a paralegal from Portland, Ore., said she was visiting the Kragga Kamma Game Park outside Port Elizabeth, South Africa, with her husband and friends. A park ranger took her to meet a docile, older cheetah named Duma in a large enclosure that included two 18-month-old cheetah brothers, Mark and Monty.

As Duma luxuriated in the sun, Bodenheimer, 33, crouched down next to the big cat to have their photo taken. That’s when something from behind pushed her down.

Photoblog: Woman survives cheetah attack by playing dead 

“I didn’t feel any pain when it happened,” she told msnbc.com in a telephone interview on Monday. “I started to pick myself up and (a cheetah) was wrestling and playing with Duma. I felt something warm on my head, and there was blood just pouring out.”

Bodenheimer believes the cheetahs were simply playing, but even so, they managed to shred her right ear, hook her ear canal with a claw and leave a 3- to 4-inch gash along her hairline. She suffered some hearing loss and still has scars, although they are fading.

At the time park officials reassured her that  cheetahs Mark and Monty would be removed from the enclosure so the incident wouldn’t repeat itself.

“It’s evident these cubs are too big to have an enclosure with people,” Bodenheimer said. “I don’t want the cats to be put down or chained up, but they need to be moved to an enclosure where they are in contact with no one but their caretakers."

Archibald D'Mello via AP

After Violet D'Mello was attacked by two cheetahs, a girl who was also attacked and her brother have not been able to sleep well at night. Their father said they wake up screaming.

What would happen, Bodenheimer asked, if a tourist stepped on a cat’s paw, had the wrong smell or wore the wrong color? Mark and Monty may have been hand-raised by humans, but they are wild animals, she said.

“You don’t know how they’re going to respond,” she said.

Bodenheimer was treated at a hospital and South Africa and released a short time later.

As for Violet D’Mello, the Scottish tourist who was attacked just over a week ago, she said was traumatized by the event.

"They weren't being vicious. You could tell they (the cheetahs) were just excited, but it became serious very quickly," D’Mello told the Port Elizabeth Herald.

D'Mello said her husband was taking pictures of her with the cheetahs at the game park when one grabbed the leg of a child. The girl got free, although with deep scratches the required stitches.

Woman, child survive mauling by cheetahs at wildlife park

Then the cats pounced on D’Mello from behind. One pawed her head, and the other bit her legs, pinning her down.

"It all happened in just a few minutes," she said of the April 28 incident, "but it was a nightmare."

She was treated at a local hospital for wounds on her head and face.

The wounded child, Camryn Malan, had wanted to see the cheetahs after doing a school report on the animals. She reportedly received stitches on her leg.

Camryn's father, Samuel Malan, said that Camryn and her brother don't sleep well.

"They wake up screaming," he said. "I keep seeing it ... Just to see that thing biting that lady."

Many animal preserves encourage tourists to interact with animals and cubs in separate enclosures under the watch of park rangers. That’s part of the fun, Bodenheimer said, and the idea is that tourists are then more connected to the game parks’ missions of rehabilitation and conservation of threatened and endangered animals.

Bodenheimer e-mailed the South Africa park ranger last week to say she was appalled that he hadn’t learned from her experience. She said he defended himself, saying that Mark and Monty were cubs when she met them. (Though young, she said, the cubs were “the size of a great Dane with a kitten mentality.”)

Park Manager Mike Cantor of Kragga Kamma Game Park told the Port Elizabeth Herald that he didn’t know what triggered the cheetahs' actions. He said the park is reviewing its child admission policy.

"We have had incidents before where the results were just minor scratches, but nothing this hectic,” he said.

Reading those comments, Bodenheimer was upset.

“They paid my medical bills at the time,” she said. “They knew it was an issue.”

Msnbc.com’s Miguel Llanos contributed to this report.

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