Tiger conservation

For the first time in more than a century, the number of tigers in the wild has shown an increase. The latest count is around 3,890, as estimated by the Intertiol Union for Conservation of ture (IUCN). This is about 700 more than the tiger count in 2010, which stood at 3,200. More than 70 percent of the global wild tiger population is in India, and the current figures show that the country has 2,226 tigers. According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) officials, the turround may be attributed to major tiger survey and conservation efforts undertaken in India, Russia, Nepal and Bhutan. However, much needs be done in the less than seven years till 2022 — which is the deadline tiger range states set five years back to double the then world tiger population from 3,200 to 6,400. To put matters in perspective, there were approximately 1,00,000 tigers estimated living in the wild in 1900. So the world has lost around 97 percent of wild tigers in a hundred years, the WWF has pointed out. Efforts are now on to prod the governments of countries like Chi, Malaysia and Thailand to conduct surveys at the earliest to get a good fix on tiger numbers. Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday reiterated the government’s commitment towards tiger conservation, mentioning the highest ever allocation of Rs 380 crore to Project Tiger in the current fincial year. However, unless markets selling tiger parts are not targeted, the poaching of tigers is unlikely to come down. Poachers with sophisticated weapons and intertiol links need to be tackled ruthlessly in Assam, a stakeholder with sizeable tiger populations in Kaziranga, Mas, meri and Orang.