There are currently estimated to be approximately three thousand wild tigers remaining in India. This accounts for nearly seventy percent of the total global wild tiger population still alive today. The future for this species will be largely determined by developments within Indian forests over the coming decades. Consequently, the Indian government has been undertaking, since 2006, the largest ongoing wildlife census worldwide, surpassing any similar initiative from other nations that share tiger habitats.<\/p>\n
Understanding how this is implemented is essential. Tigers, as ambush predators, naturally remain elusive for much of their existence. They move with stealth, rest in thick foliage, and hunt primarily during twilight and nighttime. They may reside in a valley for weeks without any human awareness of their presence. This inherent challenge of obtaining a scientifically valid population count of an animal that has evolved over two million years to remain hidden is what prompted the Indian government, in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India and the National Tiger Conservation Authority, to shift strategies from direct observation to allowing the tigers to essentially count themselves.<\/p>\n
How to set a trap for a tiger you cannot meet in person<\/p>\n
As reported by Down to Earth magazine in their comprehensive coverage of the fourth All India Tiger Estimation, released in 2019 alongside the census results, the 2018 census iteration involved a synchronized effort by about 44,000 forestry personnel across twenty Indian states where tigers are present. This extensive work took two years to complete. Habitat evaluations were carried out across 318,000 sites within 381,400 square kilometers, covering much of the forested regions in the country where tigers might still inhabit. The expanse is challenging to comprehend, exceeding the total land area of Japan. It necessitated a collaborative field operation that no wildlife survey had ever attempted on such a scale.<\/p>\n
Related: a brief film from Space Daily exploring the invisible barriers impacting elephant movement within their remaining territories \u2014 highlighting the disparity between human perception of a landscape and the realities faced by the animals residing within it.<\/p>\n
This details the ground-based aspect, which involved searching for signs of tigers on foot. The actual counting was accomplished through cameras. The census team positioned 26,838 motion-activated camera traps in the field, systematically arranged in a grid formation over 141 distinct study areas. Each camera was engineered to activate when a warm-bodied creature triggered its sensor. They were installed in pairs, facing each other across the same pathway, ensuring that any tiger passing would be photographed from both sides simultaneously. Each pair was strategically placed about two square kilometers apart, dense enough to capture any tigers navigating the area while spaced sufficiently to ensure the budget could encompass the entire landscape.<\/p>\n
Subsequently, the team left the cameras operational. For a duration ranging from twenty-five to forty-five days per site. Throughout 2018 and into 2019, with minimal human interference beyond the sporadic retrieval of memory cards, the cameras fulfilled their purpose.<\/p>\n
The cumulative number of images captured by the cameras reached a Guinness-verified total of 34,858,623. Out of this total, 76,651 featured tigers. In percentage terms, this equates to approximately two-tenths of one percent. The remaining 34.8 million photographs predominantly showcased leopards, wild boars, sambar deer, chital, langurs, mongooses, jungle cats, forest laborers, sporadic herders, occasional poachers, and a vast array of common forest wildlife captured by the motion-triggered cameras during a month in an Indian jungle. Tigers were, statistically, the infrequent occurrence, precisely what the census aimed to document.<\/p>\n
What the images revealed once examined<\/p>\n
The seventy-six thousand tiger images needed to be categorized. Reporting by the Indian news outlet Scroll, which included direct interviews with scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India\u2019s Tiger Cell, such as former dean Yadvendradev Jhala and seasoned census scientist Qamar Qureshi, indicated that the sorting relied on a specific characteristic of tigers that had enabled the entire census to work effectively in the first place. Each tiger’s coat pattern is unique. The number, width, spacing, curvature, and arrangement of the black stripes on the distinctive orange fur of any individual tiger, as supported by genetic and developmental evidence, are individual to that animal. No two tigers on the planet share identical stripes. This is akin to a fingerprint in the animal kingdom.<\/p>\n
This meant that the 76,651 images could, in theory,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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