29th July is celebrated as International Tiger Day. The Global Tiger Day was first observed in 2010. On the same day, countries signed the St. Petersburg Declaration, of doubling the tiger population by 2022.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority has prepared a report on the fourth cycle of All India Tiger Estimation- Status Of Tigers Co-Predators And Prey In India.
The first tiger census was done in 2006.
The report says India is the safest home of the Royal Bengal Tiger with a total population of 2,967. In 2014 the population was 2,226 and in 2010 it was 1706, in 2006 the tiger population in India was 1,411 only.
There was a 21% rise of tiger population between 2006-2010, 30% between 2010-2014 and 33% between 2014-2018.
In India, the habitat of the tiger is found across five different geographical regions. The areas are Shivalik Gangetic Plains, Central India, and the Eastern Ghats, Western Ghats, North- Eastern Hills, and Brahmaputra Plains and Sunderbans.
During the preparation of the report, 3,81400 Km/Sq. of forest area was surveyed for tiger signs and prey estimation.
26,838 cameras were used to trap 141 sites.
5,22,996 Km of foot survey, 121,337 Km/Sq was covered by the camera traps.
317,958 habitat plots sampled for vegetation and prey dung.
34,858,623 wildlife photographs were taken out of which 76,651 were of tigers and 51,777 were of leopards. Nearly 83% of the estimated tiger population was captured in the photographs.
It took 593,882 Man-Days effort.
GPS-Enabled M-STrIPES (Monitoring System For Tigers Intensive Protection And Ecological Status), an application was used in capturing the data related to tiger sightings, deaths, wildlife crime, ecological observations.
The abundance estimation was done through SECR (Spatially Explicit Capture And Extract Compare). By the help of this software, one can easily differentiate in the strips of two different tigers.
The number of the protected area increased from 692 to 860 and the community reserves from 43 to 100.
Pench Sanctuary of Madhya Pradesh and Kerala’s Periyar emerged as best managed Tiger Reserves. The Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu had registered the maximum improvement.
Chattisgarh and Mizoram were the worst-performing States whereas Odisha remained constant.
