Tiger census in India reveals 12% growth in tiger population

Below is a press release from TOFT - Travel Operators For Tigers, of which Steppes Discovery is a member, commenting on the recent tiger census results from India.

Now officially 1,706 Tigers - a 12 % growth in India’s Tiger population

There is some reason for tiger lovers to celebrate - India's wild tiger population has officially grown 12 per cent in the last four years.

According to the 2010 tiger census which was released yesterday, 28th March 2011, there are approximately 1,706 of the big cats in the country, which includes about 70 in the marshes of the Sunderbans, which have never been scientifically surveyed before. The 2006 census had estimated that there were officially 1,411 tigers, without including any from the Sunderbans itself.
The compiler of the census, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) says thirty per cent of the tiger population lives in areas outside the government's Tiger reserves, giving conservationists and forest officers a new challenge in the effort to protect them.

The announcement however, were muted by the decrease in land area where tigers can thrive. “Tiger occupancy areas shrunk from 9 million hectares to less than 7.5 million hectares over the last four years,” said Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh. “This means that tiger corridors are under severe threat, especially in Central India, in Madhya Pradesh and northern Andhra Pradesh.”

However some conservationists are not convinced by the figures. In a statement issued by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Dr Ullas Karanth, India’s most distinguished Tiger biologist, questioned the Tiger census methodology yet again, stating it is not rigorous enough and requesting that state of the art camera trap methodology should be done across the country and every year. He also stated in the release that ‘Since various threats faced by tigers do not appear to have diminished in last four years, it is difficult to explain the claimed reversal of the decline of tigers.’

Not surprisingly, these are two States that have fared the worst in the census, with tiger populations falling to 213 in Madhya Pradesh and 65 in Andhra Pradesh.
The largest number of tiger lives in Karnataka – about 280 in number – and conservation efforts have been successful in the entire Western Ghats area, with Tamil Nadu and Kerala also seeing good results. The Terai belt of grasslands at the Himalayan foothills in Uttarakhand have also done surprisingly well in nurturing their tiger populations.

While Kaziranga reserve in Assam has 100 tigers, the largest in a single reserve, there are worrying signs from the North Eastern area. These forested hills are capable of supporting far more than the number of tigers that were found in the area, but poaching and the pressure of developmental activities have kept the numbers low.
“We can deal with the threat of poachers, of the real estate and mining mafias, but it's much harder to deal with the developmental dynamic,” said Mr. Ramesh, pointing to energy projects — whether coal, hydro or nuclear — with irrigation schemes and highway proposals as among the developments endangering tigers and their ecosystem.
“A country of 1.4 billion cannot survive on solar, wind and biogas alone, so we do need commercial sources of energy, but we also need to conserve these forests,” he told Mr. Ahluwalia. “We must decide whether we can afford a 9 per cent growth agenda which would destroy our forests and the cultures and livelihoods that depend on them.” He added that rivers linking, hydro and irrigation projects could destroy the Panna, Buxa and Valmiki tiger reserves.

All India Estimates:
2006 1411*
2010 1708*

* Mean figure

Region wide estimates:

Shivalik- Gangetic plains (Uterakhand, UP and Bihar)
2006 297
2010 353

Central India and Eastern Ghats (MP, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra. Andra Pradesh, Orissa)
2006 601
2010 601

North East and Brahmaputra Flood Plains (Assam, AP, Mizoram and North West Bengal)
2006 100
2010 148

Sundabans
2006 Not available
2010 70

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