THE tiger census shows a steady rise in the number of the ‘royal’ beasts in India. It has been reported that the tiger population grew by close to six per cent every year since 2006. Also, India has featured in the Guinness Book of World Records with its 2018 tiger census being the world’s largest camera trapping wildlife survey.
Camera trap survey is done with a digital camera connected to an infrared sensor that captures a warm, moving object in the vicinity. When an animal crosses the path of its sensor, the camera automatically records it. The data is then collated and compiled.
The census is held every four years, by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) with technical help from the Wildlife Institute of India. Also involved in the huge exercise are state forest departments and other related agencies.
The fourth cycle of the Tiger Census 2018 was conducted in 2018-19. It accounted for 2,976 tigers. Thus, India earned the distinction of being home to 75 per cent of the global tiger population.
Resolution fulfilled
Therefore, with numbers having increased from around 1,500 in 2010, India fulfilled its resolution to double the number of tigers made at St. Petersburg Tiger Summit in 2010. The recently released minimum population estimate is 22 per cent higher than the comparable count of 2,591 tigers during the 2018 census.
This reflects a steady increase in their numbers across the country. And the growth happened despite “local extinctions” of tigers in some areas in central India and the Western Ghats. The tiger is listed as ‘endangered’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) ‘Red List of Threatened Species’.
The largest of all cats, the tiger once occurred throughout central, eastern, and southern Asia, states IUCN. However, it adds, “In the past 100 years, the tiger has lost more than 93 per cent of its historic range and now only survives in scattered populations in 13 countries, from India to Southeast Asia, and in Sumatra, China and the Russian Far East”.
Environmental network
The IUCN was created in 1948 and is today a huge environmental network, harnessing the knowledge, resources and reach of our more than 1,400 member organisations and 15,000 experts.
This diversity and expertise make IUCN perhaps the largest, and the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.
The organisation records: “The Caspian, Javan and Bali tigers are already extinct, and of the remaining six subspecies, the South China Tiger has not been observed for many years. Poaching and illegal killing are the major threats to the species, to meet an illicit demand in high-value tiger body parts for the Oriental medicine market. Habitat loss and overhunting of tigers and their natural prey have also caused a reduction in distribution and, over the past century, tiger numbers have fallen from about 100,000 individuals to an estimated 3,500.”
Conservation, protection
The future of this species, IUCN further says, also depends upon conserving and protecting large areas of suitable habitat with viable populations, while working with local communities to discourage retributive killings.
India has, therefore, achieved a huge task by providing an ecosystem for the “Panthera tigris” (scientific name for tiger) to sustain and flourish. “As a top predator and a keystone species, a healthy tiger population reflects the health of the environment.
Conservation efforts to protect tigers can therefore contribute to the preservation of healthy herbivore populations, other carnivore species and ultimately the entire ecosystem and its functions,” states IUCN.
It is thus time to celebrate with the lines of the poet William Blake who once wondered about the creator of the powerful, beautiful, yet fearsome animal with the words, ‘Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?’
