Yahoo – AFP,
20 Jan 2015
The census
found 2,226 tigers in India last year compared with 1,706 in 2010.
(AFP Photo) |
New Delhi
(AFP) - India, home to most of the world's wild tigers, on Tuesday reported a
30 percent jump in numbers over four years in a rare piece of good news for
conservationists.
A census
found 2,226 tigers in India last year compared with 1,706 in 2010, officials in
New Delhi announced.
Environment
minister Prakash Javadekar hailed the rise as a "huge success" as
India battles to save the endangered animals from poachers and smugglers as
well as destruction of their natural habitat.
"While
the tiger population is falling in the world, it is rising in India. We have
increased by 30 per cent from the last count. That is a huge success
story," Javadekar said at the release of the census.
The
minister cited improved management of India's more than 40 tiger reserves for
the increase.
He said the
government was working to reduce deadly encounters between tigers and
villagers, as farmers encroach on forest land and the big cats leave reserves
to search for water and food.
Some 9,700
hidden cameras were used in known tiger habitats including in the northeast
state of Assam and western Rajasthan to take photographs of the animals for the
count.
More than
half of the world's rapidly dwindling wild tiger population lives in India, but
the country's conservation programme has been working to halt their decline.
The numbers
have been rising since they dropped to 1,411 in 2006 but the current population
still remains a long way off 2002 when some 3,700 tigers were estimated to be
alive in the country.
There were
thought to be around 40,000 tigers in India at the time of independence from
Britain in 1947.
Authorities
across Asia are waging a major battle against poachers, who often sell tiger
body parts to the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market, and other
man-made problems such as development leading to habitat loss.
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