India’s overall tiger population was estimated at 2,967 of which 83% were actually camera trap based capture mark recapture and remaining 13% were estimated through Spatially Explicit Capture Recapture (SECR) covariate based model. Tigers observed to be increasing at a rate of 6% per annum in India when consistently sampled areas were compared from 2006 to 2018.
According to the Tiger Census report 2018 released on Tuesday by the union minister of environment Prakash Javadekar, tiger occupancy was found to be stable at 88,985 km at the country scale since 2014. Though there has been losses and gains at individual landscapes and state scales. The present survey is a more granular estimate of these numbers.
Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of tigers at 526, closely followed by Karnataka (524) and Uttarakhand (442). Chhattisgarh and Mizoram saw a decline in tiger population and all other States saw a “positive” increase.
‘’Today India has 70% of the world's Tiger population, we are in a leading position and we are ready to work with all the 13 tiger range countries; in their training, capacity building, and management of tiger reserves. Conservation of tigers also ensures the well-being of the forest ecosystem,’’ said Javadekar.
The minister said with the presence of nearly 30% of India’s tigers outside tiger reserves, it has embarked upon assessing management interventions through the globally developed Conservation Assured Tiger Standards framework which will now be extended to all 50 tiger reserves across the country.
Javadekar also announced that his Ministry was working on a programme to provide water and fodder to animals at the forest itself to deal with the challenge of human-animal conflict that was causing the death of animals. For this, LIDAR based survey technology will be used for the first time for measuring distances by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflection with a sensor.
