Extensive India tiger census report released

Meena Janardhan

India’s latest Tiger Census Report released by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently has a lot of good news. The ‘Status of Tigers 2022’ report shows tigers occupying new areas and that the number of these big wild cats has grown at least by 200 to 3167 in 2022 from the last count in 2018.  According to data released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), as an Economic Times report points out, this survey is the most extensive wildlife survey to date, encompassing 20 states and entailing a foot survey of 641,449 kilometres, 324,003 sampled habitat plots, and camera traps at 32,588 locations, capturing 470,81,881 images. The survey identified an increase in tiger populations with a minimum estimated population of 3167 individuals, up from 2697 in 2018. Experts say this is a conservative estimate and the final estimates, when they are out in two months, are likely to show a bigger leap.

As the Executive Summary of the NTCA report states, in 1973, the Project Tiger was established with the objective of utilizing the tiger’s functional role and charisma to garner public support and resources for preserving representative ecosystems. Since its inception, the project has expanded from nine tiger reserves covering 18,278 square km to 53 reserves covering 75,796 square km, which account for 2.3% of India’s land area. Despite this, most tiger reserves and protected areas in India are existing as small islands in a vast sea of ecologically unsustainable land use, and many tiger populations are confined to small protected areas. Although some habitat corridors exist that allow tiger movement between them, most of these habitats are not protected areas, continue to deteriorate further due to unsustainable human use and developmental projects, and thereby are not conducive to animal movement.

According to the Summary, the tiger occupancy has increased from 1758 cells of 100 km2 in 2018 to 1792 in 2022. The unique tigers photographed in 2022 is 3080, while in 2018 there were 2461 unique tigers captured. The minimum estimated population is 3167. Population increase is substantial in Shivalik & Gangetic flood plain which is followed by Central India, North Eastern Hills and Brahmaputra flood plains and Sundarbans while Western Ghats population showed decline with major populations being stable.At the beginning of the first tiger monitoring exercise in 2006, India was divided into 100 square kms grids, and since then, this sampling space has remained constant. Each grid was uniquely coded so that subsequent inferences can be compared on the same spatial scale and extent. The overall sampled space for Phase I remains constant; what changes within that is camera-trapped space versus model-predicted space for the tiger population. The estimation exercise is carried out in three phases, Phase I entails data collection at beat scale by forest department staff across country covering 10146 grids (of 100 square km) followed by Phase III where the sampling is done at 174 sites encompassing 32588 locations which resulted in 470,81,881 photographs having 97,399 tiger pictures. Phase II is done at the Wildlife Institute of India which involves generating landscape level data using remote sensing and secondary data sources. Total man-days in data collection and collation were 641,102. This is the largest survey done so far.

The Summary points out that to ensure the long-term survival of tigers in India, a multi-faceted approach is needed, including protecting and expanding tiger habitats, preserving population connectivity, minimizing human-tiger conflicts, and combating threats like habitat loss, poaching, and illegal trade. It’s important to restore habitats, increase ungulate populations, and plan reintroduction of tigers in low density areas to tackle conflict issues. The involvement of various stakeholders, such as governments, NGOs, local communities, and businesses, is crucial. Strategies like increased patrolling, monitoring, and law enforcement, focus on ‘Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECM)’ along with promoting ecotourism and sustainable livelihoods for local communities, can help achieve this goal.

The NTCA websites states that the Government of India had launched ‘Project Tiger’ on 1st April 1973 to promote conservation of the tigers. Project Tiger has been the largest species conservation initiative of its kind in the world. While the field implementation of the project, protection and management in the designated reserves is done by the project states, who also provide the matching grant to recurring items of expenditure, deploy field staff/officers, and give their salaries, the Project Tiger Directorate of the Ministry of Environment and Forests was mandated with the task of providing technical guidance and funding support.