Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 29 released the All India Tiger Estimation Report 2018 and said the country has emerged as one of the safest habitats for tigers in the world.

India’s tiger population has grown from 1,411 in 2006 to 2,967 in 2019, according to the report.

“Nine years ago, it was decided in St Petersburg that the target of doubling the tiger population would be 2022. We in India completed this target four years in advance,” the prime minister said.

Survey highlights

According to the tiger estimation report, the tiger population in India was 1,411 in 2006.

The report covered 381,400 sq km of forests which were surveyed for tiger signs and prey estimation.

Nearly 27,000 camera traps were set up at 141 locations covering an area of 121,337 sq km and taking nearly 3.48 crore photographs. Out of the total pictures, nearly 77,000 were of tigers.

While the number of tigers have increased nationwide, there was a decline in its population in Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh.

The number of tigers in Chhattisgarh has come down from 46 in 2014 to 19 in 2018.

In Andhra Pradesh, the tiger population has come down to 48 in 2018 from 68 in 2014.

In Madhya Pradesh, the number of tigers has increased from 308 in 2014 to 526 in 2018, while in Maharashtra, it has gone up from 190 in 2014 to 312 in 2018.

The report was prepared by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body under the environment ministry, in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

MP regains ‘tiger state’ tag

With 526 tigers, Madhya Pradesh has regained the coveted ‘tiger state’ tag after losing it to Karnataka nearly a decade ago, thanks to its focus on conserving the wildlife outside the protected areas of reserves.

Karnataka is a close second with 524 tigers, followed by Uttarakhand with 442.

Madhya Pradesh, home to nearly half-a-dozen tiger reserves, had the largest number of striped animals as per the 2006 census. But it slipped to No. 2 position in 2010, when Karnataka emerged as the ‘tiger state’.

It further slid to No. 3 after Uttarakhand with Karnataka maintaining its lead in 2014 as well in terms of population of tigers.

Specialities of the survey

* India’s national tiger assessment is the largest biodiversity survey being carried out anywhere in the world.

* The fourth cycle of the assessment was undertaken in 2018 and 2019 using the best available science, technology and analytical tools.

* The unique feature of this cycle of assessment, in keeping up with Digital India, is the development and use of innovative technological tools in collection and processing of data to reduce human errors.

* In this cycle, recording of primary field data digitally through mobile phone application like M-STrIPES (Monitoring system for tigers - intensive protection and ecological status), that uses GPS to geotag photo evidence, and survey information made this exercise more accurate, with smaller margins of human error.

* Further, it involved the development of innovative technology like automated segregation of camera trap photographs to species using artificial intelligence and neural network models (software CaTRAT - Camera Trap data Repository and Analysis Tool).

* Programme ExtractCompare that fingerprints tigers from their stripe patterns was used to count the number of individual tigers.

Why are tigers endangered?

Tigers have lost about 95 per cent of their historical range. Their habitat has been destroyed, degraded and fragmented by human activities. The clearing of forests for agriculture and timber, as well as the building of road networks and other development activities, pose serious threats to tiger habitats.

As forests shrink and prey becomes scarce, tigers are forced to leave protected areas in search of their own territories. This takes them into human-dominated areas that lie between habitat fragments, where they can hunt domestic livestock that many local communities depend on for their livelihood. In retaliation, tigers are killed or captured.

Poaching is the most immediate threat to wild tigers. Every part of the tiger - from whisker to tail - is traded in illegal wildlife markets. A result of persistent demand, their bones and other body parts are used for modern health tonics and folk remedies, and their skins are sought after as status symbols among some Asian cultures.

One of the world’s largest, and most uniquely-adapted, tiger populations is found in the Sundarbans - a large mangrove forest area shared by India and Bangladesh on the coast of the Indian Ocean. It is also the only coastal mangrove tiger habitat in the world. However, rising sea levels caused by climate change threaten to wipe out these forests and the last remaining habitat of this tiger population.

How do tigers help the ecosystem?

As a large predator, the tiger plays a key role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. These ecosystems supply both nature and people with fresh water, food and health. Securing tiger landscapes could help protect at least nine major watersheds, which regulate and provide freshwater for up to 830 million people.  

To save tigers, we need to secure forest habitats across Asia where they live. By protecting large, biologically diverse landscapes, we allow tigers to roam and preserve the many other endangered species that live there. In order to protect just one tiger, we have to conserve around 25,000 acres of forest.

International Tiger Day

International Tiger Day is an annual celebration to raise awareness for tiger conservation held on July 29. International Tiger Day was created in 2010 at the St Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia when all 13 tiger range countries came together for the first time and decided that business-as-usual approaches were not working. They committed to the most ambitious conservation goal set for a single species - to double the number of wild tigers by 2022.

Project Tiger

The Union government has taken a pioneering initiative for conserving tigers by launching the Project Tiger in 1973.

Project Tiger is an ongoing centrally sponsored scheme of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change providing central assistance to the tiger states for tiger conservation in designated tiger reserves.

From nine tiger reserves since its formative years, the Project Tiger coverage has increased to 50 at present, spread out in 18 tiger range states. This amounts to around 2.21 per cent of the geographical area of our country.

The tiger reserves are constituted on a core / buffer strategy. The core areas have the legal status of a national park or a sanctuary, whereas the buffer or peripheral areas are a mix of forest and non-forest land, managed as a multiple use area.

Project Tiger aims to foster an exclusive tiger agenda in the core areas of tiger reserves, with an inclusive people oriented agenda in the buffer.

The NTCA is a statutory body of the ministry, with an overarching supervisory / coordination role, performing functions as provided in the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Regional NTCA offices have been recently established in Bengaluru, Guwahati and Nagpur.