New Delhi: The Union Environment Ministry on Saturday stressed four surveys since 2006 have shown a healthy annual growth rate of 6 per cent in India’s tiger population, offsetting natural losses and keeping their numbers at the habitats-carrying capacity level.
“Due to efforts of the Government of India thorough the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the tiger has been taken from the brink to an assured path of recovery, which is evident in findings of the quadrennial All India Tiger Estimation conducted in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018. These results have shown a healthy annual growth rate of tigers at 6%, which offsets natural losses and keeps tigers at the habitats carrying capacity level, in the Indian context”, a statement from the Ministry said clarifying over tiger deaths in the country during last 8 years.
The Ministry cited details shared by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to emphasise that the tiger population in India has been brought to an assured path of recovery from the brink in the last few years.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change said, “For the period 2012 to 2019, one can observe that the average tiger deaths per year in the country hover around 94, which is balanced by the annual recruitment as highlighted by this robust growth rate. In addition, the National Tiger Conservation Authority has taken several steps under the ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Project Tiger to address poaching, which too, is significantly controlled as seen in the confirmed poaching and seizure cases.”
The Ministry stated that NTCA maintains the highest standards of transparency in so far as making tiger death statistics available to the citizen through its website as well as dedicated portal – www.tigernet.nic.in.
The Ministry further said the presentation of data over a long time frame spread across 8 years indicates an intent to imprint the gullible reader with large numbers which may cause undue alarm. Also, not adequately covered is the fact that 60 percent of tiger deaths in India are not attributable to poaching. NTCA has a stringent protocol to ascribe cause to a tiger death, which is treated as unnatural, unless otherwise proved by the State concerned through submission of necropsy reports, histopathological and forensic assessments besides photographs and circumstantial evidences. It is only after a detailed analysis of these documents that cause is ascribed to a tiger death.