‘Save the Tiger’ campaign pays dividends – tiger population increases 30% in 4 years

#savethetiger #forestcorridors #bigcats Thanks to ‘Save the Tiger’ campaign, the numbers of the Big Cats have increased by 30% within the last 4 years. In the opinion of experts, over 5,000 tigers can be accommodated across Indian forests through effective protection. However, they feel that a manageable number would be between 3,000 and 3,500.
Of course, in order to sustain such a target it would require an economic agenda that would be sensitive to conservation. As Yadvendra Jhala, wildlife biologist at Dehradun's Wildlife Institute of India and one of the men behind the tiger census has indicated, the infrastructure development should be smart and green so that more numbers of tigers can be sustained.
He has pointed out that the biggest conservation challenge was to strengthen forest corridors in order to make it easy for the movement of tigers across forests. This is important because such movement allows for genetic diversity to local tiger populations and are believed to be key to their long-term survival.
However, most forest corridors are degraded and, in spite of that, the tigers continue to use those and migrate from one protected forest to another. Any further degradation would act like barriers.
Wildlife activists apprehend that forests would become a casualty and human-animal conflicts would rise and that is not wanted because the tiger is a symbol of our entire forests. There has to be smart infrastructure development that would be sensitive to the needs of both forests and wildlife. An example is the construction of roads through a green area - it should have overpasses and underpasses to allow free movement of animals.