The Regional Museum of Natural History (RMNH), Bhopal arranged an interactive programme on fourth International Tiger Day on Tuesday. More than seventy children drawn from various schools of Bhopal attended the school.
Scientist-E of the Museum S Sethuramalingam welcomed the gathering and informed that in a conference at Saint Petersburg on 2010, it was decided that International Tiger Day could be observed on July 29 every year to drive Tiger conservation messages.
Sethuramalingam told that during 1,913 there was a population of one lakhs tiger and after hundred years i.e. 2013 only 3,274 tigers were left on global level. Every one year we lost around two hundred tigers globaly. He further said that as per the data available only 1,706 tigers were available in India at present.
Further he said that we could save tiger population by eq (Emotional Quotient) approach. He talked that tiger also had a structured family and social life like human being. He added that we were called citizen while tigers were called denizen. As Vandna Shiva already informed the world that the mountains, rivers, animals also have right to live in the world. Regarding the census of tiger population. Sethuramalingam said that there was a need to adopt uniform approach to count the tiger cubs.
Sethuramalingam invited more focus and attention towards conserving cubs in the wild. He found the studies on tiger cubs were scanty and felt the reported fifty percent cub mortality theory needed to be revisited. Sethuramalingam opined that, that tiger cub predator relationship and "cub killing' behavior of male territorial intruding tiger, might be due to habitat loss resulting in overlapping territories. Sethuramalingam made an appeal to focus more on these aspects of tiger cubs.
Mohd Khalique, Bhopal Birds shared his experience and told that tiger was the most important part of food chain. He further added that without tiger nature balance would be disturbed. He informed about the identification of tigers. Further he said that a tigress could give birth to 2 to 6 cubs in one pregnancy. Mohd Khalique requested the young participants to help the tigers by their active participation.
Similarly, Mohd Khlique informed about the important of tiger reserves and told that 93 per cent of tiger habitats in the world have been destroyed. He told that students should be aware about the conservation of tiger would be having a bearing on their real life! He suggested to students and parents to send at least five SMS and message about conservation of tiger today to all their friends, relatives and colleagues. Students also gained information about tiger by a movie in film show in the end of programme.