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Tigers in India have seen their habitats reduced to just 7% of their original range, and the striped predators face several other threats from poaching to a loss of their prey.
Their populations in the wild have plummeted over the last century, yet thanks to successful conservation efforts under India’s Project Tiger initiative tigers are coming back from the brink.
The number of tigers more than doubled from from 1,411 in 2010 to 3,167 last year at the country’s 53 tiger reserves, according to official estimates. This success story has been the fruit of stepped-up protection efforts. To thwart poachers and keep track of tigers living in protected areas, for instance, officials have deployed drones, camera traps and other hi-tech means.
“Project Tiger was conceptualized with the goal of restoring tiger populations and protecting their habitats in India. Today, after five decades, Project Tiger is recognized as one of the most successful species-specific conservation programs globally,” says Ravi Singh, head of WWF-India.
“And to keep this momentum going and see growth and stability in tiger numbers, this exceptional conservation program will require continued dedication of combined efforts and management of human-wildlife interactions.”
Political leadership has lent its support to these conservation efforts.
“We have thousands of years of history related to tigers,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently stressed. “A better future for humanity is only possible when our environments are protected and our biodiversity continues to expand.”
India’s tigers now account for two-thirds of all tigers in the wild, but the country’s wildlife officials still have their work cut out for them, primarily because continued development has turned protected wildlife habitats into “small islands in a vast sea of ecologically unsustainable land use,” according to WWF.
Encouragingly, other nations such as Thailand have also managed to stabilize their wild tiger populations, raising hopes that the iconic predators can be saved from extinction.
“Concerted efforts from tiger range countries are really encouraging. The wild tiger status has registered an upward trend in some countries, and others are working hard to further strengthen their efforts,” says Rajesh Gopal, secretary general of the Global Tiger Forum.
