View from India: Tiger numbers double, ahead of schedule

By Kavitha Srinivasa

Published Wednesday, August 7, 2019

India is home to around 75 per cent of the world’s tiger population, with approximately 3,000 animals in the wild, making it the largest tiger habitat in the world. International Tiger Day 2019 offered these insights.

What makes this year’s International Tiger Day (annually tiger-earmarked as July 29) special is that India has achieved a historic achievement. The country’s tiger population, which was around 1,400 15 years ago, has increased phenomenally. This suggests that it is possible to strike a healthy balance between development and environment.

Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi reaffirmed the commitment towards the protection of tigers as he revealed the latest tiger census at his official residence. “Nine years ago, it was decided in St. Petersburg that the target of doubling the tiger population would be 2022. We have completed this target four years before time,” said Modi.

According to the tiger census report, the fourth cycle of assessment happened through a combination of scientific measures, technology and analytical tools. Some of them include M-STRiPES, a mobile phone app. There’s also GPS to geo-tag photo evidence. GPS telemetry sheds light on the animal’s location and its movements.

Several factors have contributed towards the tiger population. Forest cover is on the rise and the number of protected areas has increased from 692 in 2014 to over 860 in 2019. At the same time, the number of community reserves has increased from about 43 in 2014 to almost 100 this year.

“Conservation plans for the Asiatic Lion and Snow Leopard found in the Gir forests of Gujarat are also being worked on rapidly. Today, the National Tiger Conservation Authority has signed agreements with five countries including China, Russia and soon the agreement with other countries is also fixed. Guatemala is also taking technical help from us for its jaguar conservation,” added Modi.

With the protection of tigers, the focus is on the creation of an environmentally sustainable eco-tourism infrastructure.

In December 2018, India submitted its sixth national report (NR6) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) highlighting the progress it has made in achieving the 12 National Biodiversity Targets (NBT) set under the convention process. It is reported that India had already exceeded two targets and it is on track to achieve another eight soon.

The tiger is India’s national animal, hence it’s imperative to protect this majestic animal. Technology can be an enabler to give information on the animal’s movement, its distribution and ecology. This will help to safeguard the big cat, protect its buffer zone and scale up the fragmented habitat.

Already the Government of India (GoI) has rolled out conservation efforts with Project Tiger. This centrally sponsored scheme that began in 1973 works towards the conservation of tigers in designated tiger reserves. There’s also the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change under the GoI.

Both Project Tiger and NTCA are focusing on tiger preservation by initiating tech-led measures. Thermal cameras are being utilised for e-Eye system, a surveillance activity. Camera traps are being used to maintain a photo identity database of Indian tigers. Through this, a national database of individual tigers is being prepared.

There are various possibilities for conservation using technology, such as camera traps and acoustic sensors to record the roar of the tiger. The sound recording is used to detect its movements and monitor the animal’s health condition. The process of turning sights and sounds into tiger data happens through technology. Digital conservation means data gathering, processing and engagement - and we need it. Real-time data on the tigers can help conservationists understand the behavioural pattern of the striped big cat. It also facilitates the development of an accurate tiger census. The data can also be leveraged to create digital maps. Tiger trails can be created using electronic tagging and remote-sensing satellites.

India is the world’s second-largest mobile app market by downloads. Apps that give live information about tigers and the tiger reserves in India can help raise awareness. This can evolve into a holistic content-sharing participatory platform. Interactive computers and kiosks at safaris and tiger reserves can generate public interest.

As far as possible, the technologies should be of the open-source kind, so that they can be scalable and deployed in the natural habitats of the tigers in a cost-effective manner.

Even while all this is going on, the human-tiger conflict continues to periodically make the news. As a consequence of this, a new policy is forthcoming to allocate additional land for compensatory afforestation operations in tiger corridors. The policy aims to reduce the human-animal conflict.

Also known as Global Tiger Day, International Tiger Day was first established on 29 July 2010 at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia. This was done to increase international awareness about the declining number of wild tigers and encourage greater efforts towards worldwide tiger conservation.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/08/view-from-india-tiger-numbers-double-ahead-of-schedule/