TWO WEEKS after the TEHELKA report (Still Counting More Tigers Per Tiger, 30 March), the NTCA on 14 April adopted refined
protocols for intensive monitoring of tiger source populations under Phase IV of
the National Tiger Estimation.
The new protocols will enable state forest departments to
formally collaborate with qualified scientists and enable them to shift from
estimating minimum numbers of tigers to robust estimates of population density,
change in numbers over time, survival and other crucial parameters. The
collaborative process is expected to ensure robust scientific standards as well
as greater transparency in data collection and analyses.
“We fine-tuned the protocols for better results. It may not
always be possible for reserve managers to access adequately qualified
scientists. So it (Phase IV) will be a ‘ladder process’ in which tiger reserves
will graduate from routine management-oriented monitoring to intensive
scientific monitoring,” says NTCA member-secretary Dr Rajesh Gopal.
“When implemented fully, these refinements will put India’s
tiger monitoring programme well ahead of any other in the world,” says Dr Ullas
Karanth, director, Wildlife Conservation Society-India, whose team of scientists
collaborated with the NTCA and the Wildlife Institute of India on the
protocols.
The analysis of the data will be done in collaboration with
a technical expert/scientist conversant with spatially-explicit
capture-recapture process. The NTCA also noted that the period of leaving the
camera traps open is important owing to the fundamental assumption of
“population closure” (no deaths/ births /immigrations/emigrations) and that
leaving the cameras open for longer duration may lead to over estimation.
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