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Young World
Tigers don’t change their stripes
RAVI CHELLAM
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Most of the areas designated as protected are isolated islands of wilderness…
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Photo: AFP
Game of survival: Tough fight to keep them going.
Tigers are large wild cats. Cats are carnivorous and territorial and with the exception of lions are solitary animals. These characteristics translate into specific ecological requirements for tigers (sufficient numbers of large-sized prey for them to hunt and feed on, extensive and contiguous habitats with little or no human disturbance), requirements when compromised negatively impact the survival of individual tigers and the growth and persistence of tiger populations.
This has been documented in the recently released report of the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India ‘Status of tigers, co-predators and prey in India’. This is the first nation-wide attempt to assess the status of tiger habitat, its prey species and the population status of tiger and its associated predators using scientific sampling techniques. Till now policy makers, wildlife managers and the public including the media have been obsessed with total counts of endangered species. Such counts by definition are unreliable.
Protected?
Currently the estimated population of wild tigers in India is between a minimum of 1165 and a maximum of 1657 and they occur in several populations most of which are small and isolated. The states with the highest numbers of tigers include Madhya Pradesh (236 to 364) Karnataka (241 to 339) while the numbers are low in states like Bihar (7 to 13).
Given the current low number of wild tigers and their precarious conservation status due to their fragmented habitats and extensive poaching, we as a nation will have to make an immediate and strong commitment to provide for the ecological needs of the tigers and also afford its habitat, prey and the tigers themselves adequate protection. This will show our commitment to the conservation and survival of our national animal, which has strong cultural links. If we do not invest sufficient resources soon, it is quite possible that the tigers will go extinct within the next few years and India would then have failed its citizens as well as citizens of the world by mutely presiding over the extinction of probably the most evocative icon of Indian wilderness.
The write is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.
Dire thought
Most of our protected areas are isolated islands of wilderness. They are set in a matrix of habitat that is increasingly hostile to nature and have rather small populations of tigers. These need protection and active management failing which they will become locally extinct like what happened in Sariska Tiger Reserve.
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