Indian tigers roaring back against the tide of extinction

India’s tigers have made a roaring comeback in the 50 years since a project was launched to save them from extinction.

A tiger in Ranthambhore National Park, India.

India’s tigers have made a roaring comeback in the 50 years since a project was launched to save them from extinction.

The World Wild Fund for ­Nature said it has recorded 3167 of them, more than double the 1411 recorded when the census began in 2006.

“Just as we are celebrating 75 years of independence, 75 per cent of the global tiger population is in India,” Prime Minister ­Narendra Modi said.

When Project Tiger began in 1973, India had 1827 tigers and nine reserves. Today it has 53 ­reserves and about 70 per cent of the global tiger population.

Ravi Singh, chief executive of WWF India, called the project “one of the most successful species-specific conservation programs in the world”.

The previous tiger census, in 2018, marked a sharper increase of 33 per cent in the tiger population, and the addition in the latest census of 200 tigers, or 6.7 per cent, may seem modest in comparison but wildlife experts say it is significant. India’s tiger population is concentrated in six states, and the country has run out of space for further wildlife reserves.

Cameras have made recording the animal’s numbers more accurate. Forest officials no longer need to trek through forests, scouring the ground for pug marks – paw prints – to estimate their numbers.

Once they have identified the tigers’ habitats the technology does the rest. About 32,500 cameras have been mounted on trees or posts, taking millions of photographs of whatever four-legged creature comes into view.

Left to humans, sifting through the images would take years, but the cameras are fitted with artificial intelligence software that can quickly categorise all the images and ensure the ­tigers are identified accurately.

The technology is not foolproof, however. “Sometimes, if the tiger appears in the camera at an angle, it can confuse the software so some images do need to be looked at by researchers,” Wildlife Conservation Trust president Anish Andheria said.

While the latest figures were “no mean feat” for the country, more could be done: “In some states there is tremendous poverty and people who are struggling to survive think nothing of poaching or allowing poaching, so we need policies to give them livelihoods.”

The Times