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201523Jan20:39

India’s tigers come roar­ing back say Indian researchers

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 23 Jan­u­ary 2015 | mod­i­fied 23 Jan­u­ary 2015
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Bengal tigersIndia’s tiger pop­u­la­tion has sig­nif­i­cantly increased accord­ing to the 201415 India tiger esti­ma­tion report released today. Recent years have seen an impres­sive 30% rise in num­bers– from 1,411 in 2006 to 2,226 in 2014.

The increase in the tiger pop­u­la­tion can be largely attrib­uted to bet­ter man­age­ment and improved pro­tec­tion within tiger reserves and other tiger bear­ing pro­tected areas. Poach­ing remains the great­est threat to wild tigers today with tiger parts in high demand through­out Asia.

These results con­firm that more than half of the world’s tigers are in India, and thus, an up-​to-​date and pre­cise esti­ma­tion becomes imper­a­tive for assess­ing the suc­cess of future con­ser­va­tion efforts.
Ravi Singh, Sec­re­tary Gen­eral & CEO, WWF-​India »

This demon­strates that species con­ser­va­tion works, espe­cially when it brings together polit­i­cal will, strong sci­ence and ded­i­cated field efforts,” said Singh.

The report, Sta­tus of Tigers in India, 2014, pub­lished by the National Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity of the Gov­ern­ment of India, high­lights that the future of tigers in India depends on main­tain­ing undis­turbed core habi­tats for breed­ing tiger pop­u­la­tions, habi­tat con­nec­tiv­ity and pro­tec­tion from poach­ing of tigers and their prey.

At a time when the global tiger pop­u­la­tion is under threat, it is heart­en­ing that India’s tiger num­bers are increas­ing. This was not the sit­u­a­tion a decade ago and I am proud that we have risen to the chal­lenge and turned the sit­u­a­tion around,” said Prakash Javadekar, Indian Min­is­ter for Envi­ron­ment and Forests, at an event mark­ing the release of the figures.

Since 2010, all tiger coun­tries have been work­ing to dou­ble global tiger num­bers, a goal known as Tx2. This new result from India cou­pled with the increase from the last cen­sus demon­strates that even in densely pop­u­lated and eco­nom­i­cally boom­ing Asia, ambi­tious tar­gets for species recov­ery can be achieved. India’s tiger pop­u­la­tion in 2010 was esti­mated to be 1,706.

An essen­tial part of Tx2 is for coun­tries to count their tigers. India’s 2014 tiger esti­ma­tion is the largest and most thor­ough tiger cen­sus ever under­taken; cov­er­ing 18 states with more than 300,000 sq km sur­veyed includ­ing areas out­side tiger reserves.

At the Dhaka Con­fer­ence in Sep­tem­ber 2014, tiger coun­tries agreed to release a new global tiger pop­u­la­tion fig­ure in 2016, the halfway point to Tx2. This year Rus­sia will carry out a full range Amur tiger sur­vey, with sur­veys also expected from Bangladesh, China, Nepal and Bhutan.
Com­pre­hen­sive sur­veys are urgently required in Malaysia, Indone­sia, Thai­land, Myan­mar, Laos, Cam­bo­dia, and Vietnam.

Tx2: Dou­bling Wild Tigers by 2022:

(Source: WWF Tigers Alive on Vimeo)


To under­take a cen­sus at this scale reflects the ded­i­ca­tion, expe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship of the Indian National Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity,” said Mike Baltzer, Leader of WWF’s Tigers Alive Ini­tia­tive. “How­ever this invest­ment and hard work can so eas­ily be undone by poach­ers and it is imper­a­tive all tiger gov­ern­ments step up efforts to achieve zero poaching.”

In Feb­ru­ary, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant anti-​poaching meet­ings ever held, ‘Sym­po­sium: Towards Zero Poach­ing: Asia’, will be hosted by the Nepalese gov­ern­ment. This ‘real skills’ event will be attended by more than 13 Asian gov­ern­ments, with the objec­tive to launch an imme­di­ate, coor­di­nated region-​wide effort to halt poach­ing across Asia.

The esti­ma­tion exer­cise in India saw an unprece­dented effort from the National Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity, state for­est depart­ments, the Wildlife Insti­tute of India, and con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing WWF-​India, CWS, ATREE, Aaranyak, WRCS and WCT.

The shown resilience of the Ben­gal tiger in India is wel­comed by all. Nev­er­the­less, some cau­tion should be observed still regard­ing the valid­ity of the com­par­isons between the 2014 cen­sus results and nation-​wide tiger sur­veys from 2006 and 2010, accord­ing the state­ment of Pan­thera and the Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Trust.




(Source: WWF news release, 20.01.2015; Pan­thera press release, 22.01.2015)


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Tiger map” (CC BY 2.5) by Sander­son et al., 2006.

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