Tigers roar back, numbers show steady rise

The total number of tigers in 2014 could be somewhere between 1,720 and 1,800 as compared to 1,706 four years ago, said top government sources, quoting figures from a year-long survey.

Updated on: Jan 12, 2015, 11:43:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The country’s tiger population has increased marginally and the numbers were stabilising in most of the protected habitats for big cats, indicating good tidings for the besieged kings of our jungles.

The total number of tigers in 2014 could be somewhere between 1,720 and 1,800 as compared to 1,706 four years ago, said top government sources quoting figures from a year-long survey which will go into the third tiger estimation report to be made public on January 20.

“The data from some tiger landscapes was still being collated and, therefore, we have not reached the final population figure for 2014. But, initial estimate show slight and not a significant increase in numbers,” said an official.

India has been struggling to hold on to its last few hundreds of big cats left in the wild because of rampant poaching that feeds an illegal international trade, which supplies animal parts to the traditional Chinese medicine market, and also habitat loss, prey depletion and poor management of tiger reserves.

But conservation efforts have paid off. The species breeds quickly wherever there is adequate prey and good protection measures are in place.

Tiger population has been on an upswing since 2006 when it dipped to an alarming 1,411 from over 3,000 in early 2000, prompting the government to form a Tiger Task Force and tighten protection measures.

The increase between 2006 and 2010 didn’t reflect uniformly because only a handful of habitats — such as Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, Kaziranga National Park in Assam and some reserves in southern India — supported a good population.

The comforting roar was missing from Madhya Pradesh, which was once an undisputed tiger haven. The country’s other popular tiger destinations, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, recorded a dip in numbers in some of their tiger reserves.

Not for long though, as latest trends suggest. “The decreasing trend has either reversed or stopped. There has not been a fall in tiger numbers in any landscape and most have witnessed some increase. Many tiger reserves show a stable population near to its optimal capacity, some are moving in that direction and only a few have shown a slight dip,” the official said, describing Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh and Bor in Maharashtra as habitats with some concern.

The country has five landscapes — Shivalik-Gangetic Plains, Central India and Eastern Ghats, Western Ghats, North-Eastern India and Sunderbans — for the tiger census that started in early 2013.

Besides the tiger headcount, the census provides useful data on other wildlife living alongside the big cats. Data is collected through camera trap, DNA tests and ground report from thousands of foresters scouring the wild.

The latest report could show a decline in tiger population outside its 47 protected areas the corridors connecting them are in a shambles. Less than 10% of the tiger population lives outside the protected zones — not a small number to be wished away considering so much little are left in India.

Over the past several years, the government has sanctioned projects in some of the corridors despite initial resistance by the National Tiger Reserve Authority.

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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