Tiger population rises <i>by 20pc in India</i>
Royal Bengal Tiger
The tiger population in India has gone up by 20 percent over the last five years, according to the latest official census of the big cat released yesterday. There are now 1,706 tigers in India, 295 more than in the last count in 2006, says the census released by Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh at an international conference on tiger in the Indian capital New Delhi. The census indicates that the Sundarbans has 70 tigers, Shivalik Gangetic plains has 353, central India and Eastern Ghats 601, Western Ghats 534 and the northeast hills and Brahmaputra floodplains 148. The conference, being attended by senior officials of 13 countries, including Bangladesh, will discuss challenges, plans and priorities for implementing the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP) which aims at doubling the wild tiger population by 2022. The last census in 2006 had shown a sharp fall in tiger population, at 1,411 tigers in the wild. India was home to about 3,000 tigers around two decades ago. Numbering more than 1,00,000 at the turn of the last century, tigers have lost more than 97 percent of their population and 94 percent of their home range in just 100 years. They live in increasingly isolated habitats in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam. The GTRP marks the first formalised international initiative to save the species from extinction.
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