Indien, der er hjemsted for omkring 70 procent af verdens sidste tigre, har flere af de store flotte rovdyr end for fire år siden, viser en ny officiel optælling. Men eksperter er skeptiske, selv om både WWF Verdensnaturfonden og de indiske myndigheder glæder sig.
“Once-in-four-years country-wide estimates do not have much practical use. But everyone, including politicians and conservationists, seems to set much in store by these numbers,” says Dr K Ulhas Karanth, one of India’s top conservation experts, according to BBC online Tuesday.
According to the latest tiger census, the tiger population rose from 1,706 in 2011 to 2,226 in 2014. The latest tiger estimation identified 1,540 tigers through images collected from 9,735 camera trap locations in 18 states.
“Because of the extensive survey effort and camera trap results, which identified nearly 70 per cent of the estimated tiger number; these figures are most accurate ever,” claims WWF India, one of the country’s top conservation organisations.
Tiger numbers have definitely increased since 2006 when India upped investments under pressure from global and international conservationists in hiring more guards, protecting reserves and promoting voluntary village relocation.
All this helped, say experts, in many parts of India, although over large swathes, tigers have been wiped out or are in low numbers.
“If we have 600 breeding tigresses (huntigre) in India, we will be adding 600 cubs to the population every year. So we should not be obsessing over individual tiger deaths and focus on population recovery,” says Dr Karanth.
India has some 200,000 sq km of tiger habitat (som næsten fire gange Danmark, red.). Well-managed habitats with abundant prey (byttedyr) can support anything between 5,000 to 10,000 tigers in the long run, BBC notes.
