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Census records fall in tiger population

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: There has been a drop in the tiger population in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, according to preliminary Tiger census figures released by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun, and the National Tiger Conservation Authority here on Wednesday.

According to this census, there has been a 60 per cent reduction in the population of tigers across the four States and the decrease has been caused by poaching and loss of habitat.

Tiger reserves in Maharashtra in 2001-02 recorded 238 tigers but the number has fallen to 95. While Rajasthan registered 58 tigers in the last count, it now has only 30 tigers. Madhya Pradesh had 710 tigers in the last census and now has 265 tigers, while Chhattisgarh recorded 25 tigers.

While a countrywide complete census report is expected by year-end, this report that took two years to put together claims to have recorded a more accurate reading of the tiger population.

"The last census conducted in 2001-02 was based on pugmarks. However, this time round we have taken a more scientific approach. Several technologies have been employed to get an accurate count of the population. We have now adopted a more scientific, robust and internationally validated method to count the number of tigers that are there in India,'' said a Wildlife Institute of India official, releasing the figures at a seminar on "Monitoring tiger, prey and their habitat in central Indian landscape.''

Project Tiger director and member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority Rajesh Gopal said: ``Though this is not the complete report and the same is expected only by year-end, this exercise was to display the results obtained using more scientific methods of tracking and keeping count of tigers in the country. The tiger population has now registered a fall, according to this latest data, but people have to understand that this is a more accurate method of counting tigers unlike the pugmark method we were previously following.''

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