Tigers Creep Back from the Brink
India’s latest tiger census shows an increase in the numbers of the endangered big cat, but threats to their roaming territory could reverse those gains, officials said on Monday.
At a three-day tiger conference in New Delhi(PDF) Indian officials released the latest tiger census. The news appeared to be good. The tiger population in the 17 Indian states where they roam is on the rise, up 300 from the 2007 census. But the report was tempered with a warning — that the habitat where tigers are allowed to roam is shrinking thanks to development, roads and mining.
This conference is a follow-up to the Global Tiger Recovery Program Meeting(PDF) held last year in Russia to try to save the endangered big cats from extinction. While the numbers of Indian tigers rose to just over 1,700 since the last census that is still remarkably lower than the 3,600 tigers estimated from the 2002 census.
This meeting is all part of a global effort by 13 Asian countries where tigers live to double the global population by 2022. Poaching, hunting and habitat loss decimated the tiger population in the 20th Century. Only about seven percent of that population remains.
The Indian tiger census used hidden cameras and DNA testing to determine the number of cats in the wild and officials believe it is the most accurate count to date. The foundation of the tiger recovery program is scientific monitoring of tigers, prey and habitat.
during the 20th century the Javan, Bali, and Caspian tigers became extinct. A fourth, the South China tiger, has not been seen in the wild for more than 25 years and is assumed to have gone extinct during the 1990s.
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