India has launched its biggest ever survey to count its tiger population, BBC Online reports Monday.
The countrywide census focuses on national parks and reserves where scores of tigers have gone missing.
Wildlife experts have criticised the Indian government for failing to crack down on poachers and the illegal trade in tiger skins. Only around 3.500 tigers are left in India, compared with 40.000 a century ago. The new plan is the most ambitious yet to try to stem the decline, observers say.
The census will, for the first time, build a central portfolio of photographs and data of surviving cats to help monitor numbers. The first stage of the survey involves checking the health of tiger habitats across 17 Indian states.
India is home to 40 per cent of the worlds remaining tigers and there are 23 tiger reserves in the country. Tiger skins are prized for fashion and tiger bones for oriental medicines. Tiger pelts (skind) can fetch up to 12.500 US dollar in China
At the Panna National Park in central Madhya Pradesh, wardens already claim to have seen 34 tigers. But conservationists warn there have been too few sightings and that figures may have been inflated to paint a rosy picture of how India’s tigers are surviving.
Some say the new survey is a waste of time and money.
– To me the most important thing is protection and what we suffer from in India is a government which has reached an abysmal state where they’re not able to protect our national parks and sanctuaries, says tiger expert Valmik Thapar.
– I believe this amount of energy should be spent in protection and only some sample surveys of estimation be done – because if you protect areas tigers also flourish, he told the BBC.
The census was prompted after critics blamed the Indian government for failing to tackle poaching and an alarming rise in the trade of tiger carcasses.
Last year, it was discovered that almost all of the tiger population at the Sariska tiger reserve in Rajasthan, had been killed, BBC adds.
