International wildlife experts have lauded India’s latest tiger census, the largest centrally coordinated survey of its kind in the world, saying that it should be expanded for counting other iconic, charismatic species across the countries.
Recognizing the role of frontline staff such as forest guards in tiger conservation, they noted that, it was also important that their working conditions were reviewed to maintain motivation and effectiveness and to insure the future protection of tigers in the wild.
As per the survey released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently tiger numbers have increased to 2967 in 2018, up from 2226 in 2014.
Dr. Chris Carbone, Senior Research Fellow, Doctoral Programmes Coordinator, Institute of Zoology, who was part of the process to assess India’s tiger population during various estimations since 2006 said that this (fourth cycle of all India tiger estimation 2018) is the largest centrally coordinated survey of its kind in the world and represents an immense achievement providing invaluable information on the status of not only big cats, but a wide range of coexisting mammals in tiger habitats.
Carbone recalled that there have also been impressive improvements since the original survey in 2006 due, in part, to general technological advances (e.g. camera-traps, mobile phones and GPS etc.), but also due to the efforts of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and partners to develop software tools to automate the data recording and processing, including the use of M-STrIPES (phone app for all types of on-field data entry) and data analysis (Extract Compare (tiger ID) and CATRAT (species ID)).
Increase in number of tigers is a welcome news, but it is “essential therefore that tiger core areas and key habitat corridors continue to be maintained and protected against threats of development.”
Dr. Matt Hayward Associate Professor of Conservation, School of Environmental and Life Sciences University of Newcastle, Callaghan added, “deriving a population estimate for any rare and elusive species is a challenging task, but to do so for dozens of tiger populations across the entire sub-continent of India is immense.
The numbers alone are phenomenal - 44,000 field staff, 600,000 person-days, 523,000 km of walked transects, 318,000 habitat surveys, 26,800 camera trap locations across an area of 381,000 km yielding 35 million photographs of India’s wildlife including 76,523 photos of tigers. Yet these efforts would be redundant without using robust methods to analyse them.
This project warrants expansion and should be implemented on a suite of iconic species around the world.
Dr. Joseph Bump Associate Professor, University of Minnesota and Director of Graduate Studies, Gullion Endowed Chair in Forest Wildlife Research & Education too was in all praise for India’s effort to estimate its tiger population, which he said, was unprecedented globally and commendable in scale and scientific sophistication.
“Those responsible for leading tiger estimation in India wholly embrace that the scientific process of peer review and publication in high-quality journals should guide the choice of appropriate methods for monitoring tigers and their prey. Sensitivity analyses would add to the robustness of the process and help address warranted and unwarranted critiques, thereby building confidence in the assessment. “
While noting that the voluntary village relocation program is a major step towards providing tigers needed space, he cautioned that “care should be taken to ensure that villages are truly returned to wildlife habitat and not used for administrative expansion.”
Investment in the well-being and working conditions of forest guards is an investment in the front line of tiger conservation in India. To the extent that impacts to tiger corridors are minimized the healthy future of tigers is maximized, said Dr Bump.
The census was carried out in four phases. Phases 1 and 2 covered forest beats, generally spread over 15 sq km each, by Forest Departments, to collect signs of tiger presence like scat and pugmarks. Enumerators walked paths called line transects to estimate the abundance of prey. This was followed by sampling of plots along the transects to assess habitat characteristics, human impact, and prey dung density.
In phase 3, the information was plotted on the forest map prepared with remote-sensing and GIS application. Sample areas were divided in 2-sq-km parcels, and trap cameras were laid in these grids.
In the last phase, data were extrapolated to areas where cameras could not be deployed.
The tiger bearing habitats were divided into five landscape regions-Shivalik-Gangetic plains, Central India and the Eastern Ghats, Western Ghats, North Eastern Hills and Brahmaputra Flood Plains and the Sundarbans.