Status of Tiger

Subject: Environment

Context:

Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change has released the detailed Status of Tigers Report 2018on occasion of International Tiger Day celebrated on July 29.

Findings:

• Tigers were observed to be increasing at a rate of 6 per cent per annum in India from 2006 to 2018.
• There were nine tiger reserves when Project Tiger started in 1973. Now, India has 50 tiger reserves. Seventy per cent of the world’s tigers are in India and the conservation effort has been a huge success.
• While tiger populations remain stable in the country, the report warns that with the populations being confined to small Protected Areas, some of which have habitat corridors that permit tiger movement between them, “most of the corridor habitats in India are not protected areas, and are degrading due to unsustainable human use and developmental projects”.
• Tiger occupancy has increased in Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. The former also registered a substantial increase in tiger population, and along with Karnataka, ranks highest in tiger numbers.
• The Northeast has, meanwhile, suffered losses in population.
• The population in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha too have seen a decline in the number of tigers
• The largest contiguous tiger population in the world of about 724 tigers was found in the Western Ghats (Nagarhole-Bandipur-Wayanad-Mudumalai- Satyamangalam-BRT block).

International Tiger Day

International Tiger Day was established in 2010 at Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia to raise awareness about the decline of wild tiger numbers, leaving them in the brink of extinction and to encourage the work of Tiger conservation.