Indian tiger survey sets a Guinness record

India enters the Guinness World Records for the world’s largest camera trap wildlife survey. The All India Tiger Estimation 2018, released last year, has set the world record. The results had shown that India now has an estimated 2,967 tigers out of which 2,461 – a whopping 83% of the big cat population – have been photo-captured.

According to the Guinness citation, the fourth iteration of the survey, conducted in 2018-19, was the most comprehensive to date, in terms of both resource and data amassed. “Camera traps (outdoor photographic devices fitted with motion sensors that start recording when an animal passes by) were placed in 26,838 locations across 141 different sites and surveyed an effective area of 1,21,337 sq. km. In total, the camera traps captured 34,858,623 photographs of wildlife, 76,651 of which were tigers and 51,777 were leopards; the rest were other native fauna. From these photographs, 2,461 individual tigers (excluding cubs) were identified using stripe-pattern-recognition software,” the citation said.

The quadrennial tiger estimation is steered by the National Tiger Conservation Authority with technical support from the Wildlife Institute of India and implemented by state forest departments. “...India is home to nearly 75% of global tiger population and has fulfilled its resolve of doubling tiger numbers much before the target year of 2022,” Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said.

According to ANI reports, the fourth edition of the census, which was carried out between 2018 and 2019, was “the most comprehensive to date, in terms of both resource and data amassed,” the Guinness Book of World Record mentioned on its website.

Reacting to the achievement, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said India fulfilled its resolve to double tiger numbers four years before the target.

“Our census of tigers entered Guinness World Records because we have installed more cameras to monitor them as compared to other countries. Their population is nearly 70 per cent of the world’s tiger population,” Javadekar said.

Since 2006, the government has been conducting the census every four years led by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) with cooperation from various state forest departments and conservation NGOs.

Apart from unprecedented camera trap usage, the 2018 “Status of Tigers in India” assessment also conducted extensive foot surveys that covered 522,996 km of trails and sampled 317,958 habitat plots for vegetation and prey dung. The successful tiger count is the result of arduous and extensive foot surveys. This covered nearly 522,996 km of land and sampled 317,958 habitat plots for vegetation and prey dung. It’s estimated that the total area of forest studied was 381,200 square km and cumulatively the collection and review of data equated to some 620,795 labour-days.

The assessment was carried out over three phases, with the various datasets then combined to be extrapolated via statistical computation, which informed the final results published in the survey report.

A positive outcome of the survey was that it concluded that India’s tiger population had increased by roughly one-third: from 2,226 in 2014 to 2,927 in 2018, though some have cautioned that this rise may in part reflect more comprehensive surveying as opposed to purely a population surge. Ground surveys and camera traps recorded tiger presence in 88,985 square km of forests across 20 Indian states in 2018-19. The “lion’s share” of the tigers were found in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttarakhand. Together, these three Indian states were home to 1,492 tigers.

However, other key takeaways that still need to be improved to continue tigers’ comeback include improving “corridors” between isolated pockets of tiger territory, reducing poaching and helping to build up prey numbers through habitat restoration.

The survey commenced in the year 2006, and has since been conducted every four years. The fourth iteration of the survey is regarded to be the most comprehensive to date – both in terms of resources and data collected. The tiger count assessment exercise was divided mainly into three phases, comprising of examining datasets, statistical computation, and then the final publishing of the survey report.

As the World Wide Fund for Nature explains, while a “camera trap” might sound menacing, it actually does no harm at all to wildlife. The name is derived from the manner in which it “captures” wildlife — on film! Camera traps are not the intricate and elaborate devices you might imagine; these innovative conservation tools are in fact nothing more than everyday cameras, armed with infrared sensors that take a picture whenever they sense movement in the forest.

While the device itself is not complicated, getting the film developed is. Because the cameras are placed in such remote locations, it often takes a full day to hike to each. Cameras also must be moved occasionally because their flashes often alert animals to their presence, causing those animals to avoid the area in the future.