Joint count of elephant and big cats

Subject: Environment

Section: Indices

The Union government will for the first time in 2022 present a unified count of the tiger, leopard and elephant populations of the country.
The tiger survey is usually held once in four years and elephants are counted once in five years.
According to the most recent 2018-19 survey, there are 2,967 tigers in India.
According to the last count in 2017, there are 29,964 elephants.
Elephant numbers would be estimated by States based on DNA analysis of their dung droppings and statistical techniques.
Tigers are counted by deploying camera traps, identifying individuals based on stripes, as well as statistical analysis.
Because elephants number more than tigers and are hard to tell apart from camera-trap images alone, it is more economical and feasible to use their dung for identification.