NAGARHOLE, India — Herding cats is notoriously difficult, and even counting them presents a challenge. Particularly when they are big cats. Adding up wild tigers is a major undertaking that the Indian government completed last month after a yearlong $2 million sampling exercise with 470,000 forest foot patrols and 880 hidden cameras.
The cat count, conducted every four years, estimated that the number of tigers in the wild in India has gone up from 1411 in 2006 to about 1706. The government is also investigating and reporting their deaths by sending a ranger team accompanied by independent observers every time a tiger carcass is found.
Officials say that tight monitoring measures such as these have helped protect the endangered cat and reduced the chances of fudging the records to inflate the numbers.
But not everyone is rushing to celebrate the count. Some conservationists say that the overall count does not reflect a real progress in big cat conservation.
“Tigers have a very high birth and death rate. You cannot track the decline and survival of the tiger population in surveys conducted every four years. The government should conduct annual surveys using cameras in a more intensive manner,” said K. Ullas Karanth, director of Center for Wildlife Studies and a pioneer in India in using camera traps to monitor tigers in the southwest state of Karnataka. “Since various threats faced by tigers do not appear to have diminished in last four years, it is difficult to explain the claimed reversal of the decline of tigers.”
Not too long ago, India counted its tigers through the old paw-print method. But after reports that the method was prone to human errors and fraud, officials adopted camera trapping for the first time in 2006 during the previous census. In the current 2010 census, about 550 individual tigers were identified from photographs based on their unique stripe patterns.
“There were three phases. First, we physically collected data about tiger presence through paw prints and scratch marks on trees. Then we examined the condition of the prey and used satellite mapping to assess forest cover. And finally we used camera traps in representative areas,” said B.K. Singh, chief wildlife warden of Karnataka.
But some conservationists say that about 13 areas sampled this time were not included in the 2006 estimate. And these account for 288 of the 295 additional tigers reported. There were also reports that a few cameras malfunctioned and had to be replaced, thereby increasing the odds for data distortion. The cameras also showed a time lag, with photographs taken only after the tiger had walked away from most of the frame. In many places, the government survey kept the cameras on for more than the recommended 45 days in one spot.
About 100 years ago, there were almost 100,000 tigers in the world, but poaching, habitat destruction, human encroachment and illegal trafficking in tiger parts have drastically reduced their numbers. The current world total is about 3,500.
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