Are India’s beleaguered tiger populations bouncing back? Is the worst over?
Outlook Traveller, March 2013
Bad news is usually big news. But even good news can become great news if the media suffers from bad news fatigue. The first time tigers made happy headlines since the Sariska wipeout was in 2011 when the second quadrennial all-India tiger census claimed that the numbers had gone up by 12 per cent between 2006 and 2010.
Tired of slamming the government’s conservation failure, the figure-happy media played out the numbers in banner headlines. So, while tigers still make more news when they turn on cattle or people, the media has been
celebrating tiger booms, big and small, in several reserves since.
So, are our tiger numbers really on the rise? Have we finally been able to turn the tide that wiped out much of India’s tiger population during 2002–2005? Will spotting tigers in the wild become less a matter of chance for tourists?
On its opening page, the 2011 census report by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) quoted biologists Richard Hutto and Jock Young: “Any monitoring program is a compromise between science and logistic constraints.” In India, the trade-off is much worse.
Since the 1970s, the forest staff studied pugmarks and counted more tigers per tiger. In 2002, Project Tiger and the WII decided to replace the error-prone pugmark census method with a scientific estimation protocol. But eleven years later, India’s tiger numbers remain equally suspect.
The first all-India tiger estimation (2006–08) report said that “these population estimates have high variances” and would not be used for monitoring trends. They would just about meet the need for “converting a relevant ecological index to a more comprehensible concept of numbers”.
Between 2006 and 2010, those numbers were said to have gone up from 1,411 to 1,706. But in 2011, 13 new areas were added and accounted for a total of 288 tigers. This brings down the actual population gain to just seven tigers, or less than 0.5 per cent. Even that could be reasonably cheered if the count itself was not suspect.
The new estimation method is three-pronged. Phase one is about collecting field data on signs of tiger presence. In the second phase, satellite data is used to assess the habitat. Phase three requires camera traps to be set up in selected pockets for capturing tiger images. This data is then extrapolated to arrive at numbers for larger landscapes.
As early as 2006, a peer review by international experts questioned the feasibility of the massive exercise when there were not even enough GPS sets. It also pointed out that the new method, too, relied on the “integrity of the primary data collectors, data compilers and their supervisors”—the same reasons why the NTCA junked the old pugmark count method.
On the ground, camera trapping was done in small forest patches adding up to 10,000 sq km and this data was extrapolated to obtain tiger numbers for 80,000-90,000 sq km of India’s tiger forests. Worse, the cameras were used for far too long at most locations.
Tigers move across large areas and sampling several small patches within a landscape results in the same tigers getting clicked in different sampling areas. Cameras kept on for too long record many old tigers that die during the estimation process and young ones just passing through. Naturally, such tigers, unlike the surviving resident tigers, are not clicked repeatedly. Since the estimation depends on the numbers of tigers photographed and those clicked more than once, over-exposure leads to overestimation.
If the data was compromised, the analysis was not above board either. On the extrapolation process, the 2006 peer review cautioned that “there is also no detailed write-up of the technical analysis, explicitly identifying the analytical techniques”. The only paper was published on the new protocol, in 2011, and that did not cover the entire method.
For greater transparency, the NTCA in November 2011 began Phase IV of the monitoring process—an annual exercise to be conducted by the state Forest Departments “in collaboration with outside experts/organisations”.
So far, less than 25 per cent of tiger reserves have roped in independent organisations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society or Aranyak for Phase IV. As a result, population estimation in most tiger forests is still a sarkari preserve. For example, when Kerala’s Wayanad sanctuary claimed 80 tigers in a 344.44 sq km patch last year, it counted all the tigers shuttling between Bandipur and Nagarhole national parks as local residents. Such travesty of science is likely to continue.
Of course, tiger numbers have gone up in at least ten reserves. Pench in Madhya Pradesh is doing remarkably well with more than 50 tigers. From 26 to 53, Ranthambhore’s tiger population has doubled since 2005. The numbers have been consistently high in Nagarhole-Mudumalai-Bandipur (together around 400), Corbett (200 plus) and Kaziranga (100 plus) while Tadoba in Maharashtra is witnessing a baby boom with 32 cubs. Panna (17) and Sariska (9) are starting again from scratch and can only improve.
But these ten happy reserves make up only about 11 per cent of India’s tiger habitat. The rest draw an indifferent, even grim, picture. Indravati (Chhattisgarh), Palamau (Jharkhand) and Valmiki (Bihar) are controlled by insurgents and security forces. Others, such as Simlipal (Orissa) or Nagarjuna-sagar (Andhra Pradesh), have no objective monitoring mechanism in place. A few, including the famed Kanha (MP), are in fact recording a slide in tiger numbers.
Unfortunately, in the absence of enough wildlife passageways, tigers from the few surplus reserves cannot move to the nearest forests. So, a few plush reserves make no real difference to larger tiger-deficient landscapes. While young tigers routinely walk out of saturated reserves to explore other forest areas, few find safe access. Most end up either getting poached or fuelling man-animal conflict.
Last December, irate villagers made the forest department shoot a tiger for cattle-lifting in Wayanad. Every few months, tigers walk out of Ranthambhore and reach as far as Mathura and Kota. In Uttar Pradesh, between 2008 and 2012, three tigers showed up at Faizabad, Lakhimpur-Kheri and Rehman Khera close to Lucknow. More than 50 people have been killed by tigers near Tadoba since 2006.
But if your interest in tiger numbers depends on your chances of spotting one in the wild, and if you are yet to get over the Supreme Court’s order to gradually phase out tourism from the ‘core critical areas’ of tiger reserves, think again. Each of those ten reserves that are throwing up good tiger numbers is a prime tourist destination, but tourism could not arrest the slide in Madhya Pradesh’s most popular reserve, Kanha.
Instead of numbers, what should really worry conservationists and tourists alike is the big cat’s shrinking range. Even as the official census recorded a 12 per cent rise in tiger numbers between 2006 and 2010, almost 23 per cent of India’s tiger forests were wiped clean of tigers. Cats are prolific breeders and achieving population growth in secure reserves is not a big deal. But restoring tigers in 21,000 sq km of forests—largely in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Karnataka—where they went extinct since 2006, will be next to impossible.
If this trend continues, the wild cats will soon vanish from most forests across the country. A few pocket reserves will continue to hold sizeable populations till inbreeding—reproduction within a small closed group—takes its toll. Meanwhile, since entire reserves have been designated as ‘core critical areas’, those tigers may never get to oblige visitors if tourism is eventually taken out of core forests.
If tourists want tigers to show up in lesser forest areas where the industry may eventually shift, they cannot leave the task of defending wildlife corridors only to conservationists anymore. Forest connectivity will benefit wildlife tourism. It will help tigers and other wildlife more.
Outlook Traveller, March 2013
Tired of slamming the government’s conservation failure, the figure-happy media played out the numbers in banner headlines. So, while tigers still make more news when they turn on cattle or people, the media has been
celebrating tiger booms, big and small, in several reserves since.
So, are our tiger numbers really on the rise? Have we finally been able to turn the tide that wiped out much of India’s tiger population during 2002–2005? Will spotting tigers in the wild become less a matter of chance for tourists?
On its opening page, the 2011 census report by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) quoted biologists Richard Hutto and Jock Young: “Any monitoring program is a compromise between science and logistic constraints.” In India, the trade-off is much worse.
Since the 1970s, the forest staff studied pugmarks and counted more tigers per tiger. In 2002, Project Tiger and the WII decided to replace the error-prone pugmark census method with a scientific estimation protocol. But eleven years later, India’s tiger numbers remain equally suspect.
The first all-India tiger estimation (2006–08) report said that “these population estimates have high variances” and would not be used for monitoring trends. They would just about meet the need for “converting a relevant ecological index to a more comprehensible concept of numbers”.
Between 2006 and 2010, those numbers were said to have gone up from 1,411 to 1,706. But in 2011, 13 new areas were added and accounted for a total of 288 tigers. This brings down the actual population gain to just seven tigers, or less than 0.5 per cent. Even that could be reasonably cheered if the count itself was not suspect.
The new estimation method is three-pronged. Phase one is about collecting field data on signs of tiger presence. In the second phase, satellite data is used to assess the habitat. Phase three requires camera traps to be set up in selected pockets for capturing tiger images. This data is then extrapolated to arrive at numbers for larger landscapes.
As early as 2006, a peer review by international experts questioned the feasibility of the massive exercise when there were not even enough GPS sets. It also pointed out that the new method, too, relied on the “integrity of the primary data collectors, data compilers and their supervisors”—the same reasons why the NTCA junked the old pugmark count method.
On the ground, camera trapping was done in small forest patches adding up to 10,000 sq km and this data was extrapolated to obtain tiger numbers for 80,000-90,000 sq km of India’s tiger forests. Worse, the cameras were used for far too long at most locations.
Tigers move across large areas and sampling several small patches within a landscape results in the same tigers getting clicked in different sampling areas. Cameras kept on for too long record many old tigers that die during the estimation process and young ones just passing through. Naturally, such tigers, unlike the surviving resident tigers, are not clicked repeatedly. Since the estimation depends on the numbers of tigers photographed and those clicked more than once, over-exposure leads to overestimation.
If the data was compromised, the analysis was not above board either. On the extrapolation process, the 2006 peer review cautioned that “there is also no detailed write-up of the technical analysis, explicitly identifying the analytical techniques”. The only paper was published on the new protocol, in 2011, and that did not cover the entire method.
For greater transparency, the NTCA in November 2011 began Phase IV of the monitoring process—an annual exercise to be conducted by the state Forest Departments “in collaboration with outside experts/organisations”.
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Of course, tiger numbers have gone up in at least ten reserves. Pench in Madhya Pradesh is doing remarkably well with more than 50 tigers. From 26 to 53, Ranthambhore’s tiger population has doubled since 2005. The numbers have been consistently high in Nagarhole-Mudumalai-Bandipur (together around 400), Corbett (200 plus) and Kaziranga (100 plus) while Tadoba in Maharashtra is witnessing a baby boom with 32 cubs. Panna (17) and Sariska (9) are starting again from scratch and can only improve.
But these ten happy reserves make up only about 11 per cent of India’s tiger habitat. The rest draw an indifferent, even grim, picture. Indravati (Chhattisgarh), Palamau (Jharkhand) and Valmiki (Bihar) are controlled by insurgents and security forces. Others, such as Simlipal (Orissa) or Nagarjuna-sagar (Andhra Pradesh), have no objective monitoring mechanism in place. A few, including the famed Kanha (MP), are in fact recording a slide in tiger numbers.
Last December, irate villagers made the forest department shoot a tiger for cattle-lifting in Wayanad. Every few months, tigers walk out of Ranthambhore and reach as far as Mathura and Kota. In Uttar Pradesh, between 2008 and 2012, three tigers showed up at Faizabad, Lakhimpur-Kheri and Rehman Khera close to Lucknow. More than 50 people have been killed by tigers near Tadoba since 2006.
But if your interest in tiger numbers depends on your chances of spotting one in the wild, and if you are yet to get over the Supreme Court’s order to gradually phase out tourism from the ‘core critical areas’ of tiger reserves, think again. Each of those ten reserves that are throwing up good tiger numbers is a prime tourist destination, but tourism could not arrest the slide in Madhya Pradesh’s most popular reserve, Kanha.
Instead of numbers, what should really worry conservationists and tourists alike is the big cat’s shrinking range. Even as the official census recorded a 12 per cent rise in tiger numbers between 2006 and 2010, almost 23 per cent of India’s tiger forests were wiped clean of tigers. Cats are prolific breeders and achieving population growth in secure reserves is not a big deal. But restoring tigers in 21,000 sq km of forests—largely in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Karnataka—where they went extinct since 2006, will be next to impossible.
If this trend continues, the wild cats will soon vanish from most forests across the country. A few pocket reserves will continue to hold sizeable populations till inbreeding—reproduction within a small closed group—takes its toll. Meanwhile, since entire reserves have been designated as ‘core critical areas’, those tigers may never get to oblige visitors if tourism is eventually taken out of core forests.
If tourists want tigers to show up in lesser forest areas where the industry may eventually shift, they cannot leave the task of defending wildlife corridors only to conservationists anymore. Forest connectivity will benefit wildlife tourism. It will help tigers and other wildlife more.
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