Tiger population rising, India home to more than 2,000 big cats

Tiger population in India is estimated to be 2,226 in 2014, according to a new report released on Tuesday. The big cat population in 2010 was an estimated 1,706. The number in the central Indian landscape had gone down four years ago.

Updated on: Jan 20, 2015, 20:26:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s tiger population jumped 30% in four years, census figures showed on Tuesday, signalling that government conservation efforts over the past decade to crack down on rampant poaching and dwindling habitats have paid off.

Six-tiger-reserves-in-India-contribute-between-Rs-8-3-billion-to-Rs-17-6-billion-in-the-form-of-monetary-benefits-to-people-every-year-HT-file-photo

Latest estimates show 2,226 tigers roamed forest reserves in the country in 2014, up sharply from 1,706 in 2010. With this, India has around 70% of the world’s around 3,000 tigers, said environment minister Prakash Javadekar.

"While tiger population is falling in the world, it is rising in India. It is great news," he said.

India’s tiger numbers dwindled to a low of 1,411 in 2006, when the first scientific census was conducted, as widespread poaching, shrinking habitats from deforestation, prey depletion and poor management of India’s 47 tiger reserves took its toll on the big cat.

Since then, concerted efforts to stem the lucrative trade in tiger skin and body parts, and limiting human-animal contact seem to have turned the tide. Tiger organs and bones fetch high prices on the black market because of demand driven by traditional Chinese medicine practitioners.

The latest report -- based on camera traps and DNA testing of tiger scat --- found the tiger population had stabilised in most reserves that have almost reached the maximum number of felines they could sustain. HT was the first to report this on January 10.

The study, details of which will be released in March, – covered five major landscapes – the Shivalik-Gangetic Plains, Central India and the Eastern Ghats, the Western Ghats, North-Eastern India and the Sunderbans.

Ravi Singh, secretary general of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), said the success story demonstrated the impact of political will, science and field effort coming together.

The model should be replicated to protect other wildlife species such as the great indian bustard, the snow leopard and the hangul, experts added.

But former environment minister Jairam Ramesh, who initiated several pro-tiger initiatives, cautioned against complacency. “There are huge man-made and policy-induced threats,” he said, a reference to the NDA government’s dilution of green laws.

Former member of the National Board for Wildlife Prerna Bindra termed the spike “excellent news” but cautioned that, among other things, a strong policy and legal framework had enabled the big cat to survive.

“Diluting the laws or impinging on tiger habitat with development or infrastructure projects will endanger the tigers and our hard-won leadership in tiger conservation,” she added.

Karnataka was home to the maximum number of tigers, the census said, emerging among the biggest gainers in big cat numbers alongside Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The 11,000 sq km of the Mudumalai-Bandipur-Nagarhole complex now has the world’s largest population of a particular species of tiger, 570, the report said.

The roar, however, seemed absent in the traditional home of the tiger, Madhya Pradesh. The state now has 308 tigers as compared to 406 in Karnataka and 340 in Uttarakhand.

“The population has also stabilised in the Sunderbans with 76 tiger estimated,” said Jhala said. He added that the highest tiger density was found in Uttarakhand’S Corbett National Park in and Assam’s Kaziranga National Park.

Bad news also came out of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand that witnessed a dip in tiger population on account of poor management in habitats, especially in Maoist-affected areas.

The report said the increase in tiger numbers was far outpacing that of lions. “The annual increase in tiger population was about 6%, as compared to about 4-5% for lions in Gujarat’s Gir National Park,” said YV Jhala of the Widlife Institute of India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
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.Read More

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