India: Big cat population healthy and rising in Sunderbans

Krishnendu Mukherjee Times of India 20 Jan 15;

KOLKATA: A day before the release of the all-India tiger census report, wildlife buffs in the state have a reason to rejoice. While the big cat population inside the Sunderbans' tiger reserve area is believed to be stable, photographs of at least three cubs from outside the reserve area indicate that the population is not only healthy, it's also rising.

"The camera traps have clicked images of three cubs in the forests under the Raidighi and Ramganga ranges in the South-24 Parganas forest division recently. It shows the population of
tigers in the Sunderbans is viable and healthy," said Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve director Pradeep Vyas.

Meanwhile, a source from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), that's analyzing data as part of the all-India tiger census exercise, revealed that the population trend in the tiger reserve area is stable. "There's not much change in the big cat population inside the reserve area since the last assignment four years back," he said.

During the last census, tiger population in the park was pegged at 70 with lower and upper limits of 64 and 90, respectively. "This time, the figures of the South 24-Parganas forest division, too, will be added. Images of cubs show that new recruits are being added to the population. So, we hope the population will be over 100 this time," said chief wildlife warden of Bengal Ujjwal Bhattacharya. Of the latest images, clicked by camera traps placed inside the forest this month, one is from the Kalas island. A WII scientist revealed that a camera-trap exercise undertaken by them inside the tiger reserve area last year also captured some photographs of tiger cubs there. "Taking all this into account, we can say that Sunderbans is doing very well as far as population trend of big cats is concerned," he added.

While the WII has already sounded alert that the big cat population in the mangroves may have reached the carrying capacity, foresters have started beefing up protection measures in the forests outside the tiger reserve area in case the big cats start dispersing out. The carrying capacity of a population is the maximum number of individuals that can live in a population stably.

"We have a very good 'sink zone' or adjoining forests close to the tiger reserve area. This place can absorb the dispersing population from the reserve area. We had anticipated this long ago and started beefing up protection measures there. We have notified a 556 square km area here as the West Sunderbans Wildlife Sanctuary recently. We also developed two protection camps in Chulkathi and Kalas," said Vyas, adding that the population trend is being constantly monitored by the state through a camera-trap exercise in collaboration with the WWF-India.

WWF-India's landscape coordinator Ratul Saha, though, said whether tigers are dispersing out of the reserve area to reach forests outside it can only be found if the camera-trap exercise can be carried out simultaneously in both the areas.

Bhattacharya said that the department should also keep tabs on the sex ratio to know whether it's stable. Vyas also said that time has come to deal with the climate change impact in the mangroves.

State wildlife advisory board member Joydip Kundu said: "It's a very good news but comes with some challenges. This gives a call for more responsibility in the days ahead to protect the tiger population here." Biswajit Roychowdhury, another member of the board, said protection across the park has been beefed up.

"This is yielding results. Besides, poaching of the animals is also very difficult on a terrain like the Sunderbans," he added.

Eight new tigers have already been found during the camera-trap exercise by the WWF-India and state forest department in the mangroves.


India’s tiger population increases by almost a third
Jason Burke in Delhi The Guardian 20 Jan 15;

The number of tigers in India has increased by almost a third in the last three years, official figures released on Tuesday reveal.

The rise, from 1,706 in 2011 to 2,226 in 2014, will encourage campaigners fighting to protect the endangered species. Activists called the new statistics “robust” and “very good news”.

Around 70% of the world’s wild tigers live in India, where their habitat has been threatened by uncontrolled development and poaching.

Repeated efforts to stem trade and protect tigers from environmental pressures failed to stop their numbers in India dwindling to 1,411 in 2006.

Prakash Javadekar, the environment minister in the emerging south Asian power, said the latest figures showed a huge success story and demonstrated that the current strategy of creating reserves staffed by specialist government staff was working.

“That is why we want to create more tiger reserves. This is a proof of India’s biodiversity and how we care for mitigating climate change. This is India’s steps in the right direction, which the world will applaud,” he said.

India, one of the world’s biggest producers of carbon dioxide but still one of the poorest countries despite recent growth, is under pressure to announce measures on cutting greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change following a recent agreement between the US and China.

The new Indian government has also repeatedly said that it will prioritise economic growth, and has been criticised by some for rolling back moves to protect the environment.

Belinda Wright, of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), said the increase in tiger numbers could be attributed to a new focus over the last three or four years which has led to better field patrolling and monitoring, among other factors.

“There still remains the habitat destruction and encroachment. Hopefully the new figures will increase the pressure on the government to tread carefully when it is a matter of development in tiger habitats,” Wright said.

The new census was conducted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and involved nearly 10,000 camera traps. Almost 80% of the tigers counted in the survey had been photographed and identified individually, Javadekar said.

Most of India’s tigers live in nearly 50 wildlife reserves set up since the 1970s.

The natural habitat of tigers in India – tropical evergreen forests, deciduous forests, mangrove swamps, thorn forests and grass jungles – has almost disappeared outside reserves. Even inside designated zones, unchecked development of tourism and other industries has restricted space and food. Many end up foraging in areas with large human populations, leading to fatalities.

A 24-year-old man was killed by a tiger on the outskirts of one national park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh earlier this month.

Last year specialist hunters on elephants tracked a tiger in northern India that may have killed as many as 10 people on a 150-mile journey through villages, fields and forests, during which it crossed rivers and six-lane motorways.

“We must ensure animal-human conflict does not happen,” said Javadekar. “We have proactively decided that we will create more grasslands and water storage in forest areas so that animals can live well.”

In 2013 India’s supreme court imposed a temporary ban on tourism in the areas of national parks where tigers live. It was lifted after four months, thanks to vociferous protests from tour operators and guides.

However governance appears to be the main factor. In Uttar Pradesh, the lawless and poor northern state, tiger numbers have fallen, officials have said, with some reserves losing almost half of their population.

Around 40 tigers were killed by poachers in India in 2013 – the highest number since 2005. A total of 923 tigers were killed by poachers between 1994 and 2010, according to WPSI.

Demand for their body parts for use in traditional medicine in China and elsewhere in east Asia remains robust. Leopards and rhinos are also targeted. Prosecution of poachers is rare, convictions rarer and intelligence-led preventive policing non-existent.

Wright, the conservationist, said a major problem was the lack of corridors linking reserves which would permit tigers to travel in search of mates outside their immediate community.

“We need to focus on tiger landscapes and gene-flow. Tigers need to disperse from the source population,” she said.

The current tiger population is a fraction of the 45,000 that roamed India a century ago.