Tiger population rebounds despite human conflicts
NEW DELHI — India’s tiger population has grown to nearly 3,000, making the country one of the safest habitats for the endangered animals.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the tiger count for 2018 on Monday and said it’s a “historic achievement” for India, whose big cat population had dwindled to 1,400 about 15 years ago.
India estimates its tiger population every four years. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said the tiger population was 2,226 in the last count, in 2014.
The tiger is India’s national animal and is categorized as endangered under the Wildlife Protection Act.
Human conflicts with tigers have gradually increased since the 1970s, when India started a tiger conservation program that carved out sanctuaries in national parks and made it a crime to kill them.
“With around 3,000 tigers, India has emerged as one of the biggest and safest habitats for them in the world,” Modi said, praising all the stakeholders involved in the country’s tiger conservation exercise.
“Nine years ago, it was decided in St. Petersburg (Russia) that the target of doubling the tiger population would be 2022. We in India completed this target four years in advance,” Modi said.
Belinda Wright, founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, based in New Delhi, said India should be very proud of its conservation achievement as the latest study was a much larger and more thorough estimation of the tiger population than had previously been done.
“But we still have a long way to go to secure a longterm future for wild tigers,” she cautioned, adding that humantiger conflict was one of the biggest conservation challenges because India has so many people.
The conflict between wildlife, confined to evershrinking forests and grasslands, and India’s human population is deadly. Government data show about one person is killed every day by tigers or elephants.