It’s official. And it’s alarming. Between 2001 and 2006, we have lost more than one tiger every single day. As compared to 3,642 in 2001, the country’s tiger population, according to a 2006 estimate, stands between 1,300 and 1,500. That’s more than 2,000 tigers up in smoke.
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The Ministry of Environment and Forests has told members of the National Wildlife Board, which is headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, that tigers are in grave danger. Especially those outside protected areas. The meeting of the board is slated for the second week of September.
In 2001, there were 2,066 tigers outside reserves and protected areas. The ministry estimates that most of these tigers fell prey to either poaching or man-animal conflict. However, the majority of 1,576 in protected areas, as per the 2001 Census, are safe.
Different methods were adopted for the two censuses. While the 2006 estimate was based on data collected by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) through camera traps, DNA-testing and satellite-mapping, the 2001 survey tracked pugmarks. “These are preliminary estimates. Final figures will be known by December,” said Rajesh Gopal, member secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority.
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Valmik Thapar, a tiger conservationist and a member of the board, says, “About 90-95 per cent of tigers outside the protected areas have been wiped out. It shows that tigers cannot survive in conflict with humans.”
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Valmik Thapar, a tiger conservationist and a member of the board, says, “About 90-95 per cent of tigers outside the protected areas have been wiped out. It shows that tigers cannot survive in conflict with humans.”
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The Prime Minister on Friday asked state governments to create a development agency for each tiger reserve to increase local participation in conservation. “Wherever the local population has come into the picture, the tigers are safer,” Gopal said, citing Madhya Pradesh where ex-servicemen have been roped in to protect the big cats.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
