Tiger Deaths in India

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The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has recorded 126 tiger deaths in the year 2021.

Key Points

• The number of deaths is the highest since NTCA began collecting the data a decade ago.
  • Madhya Pradesh has maximum tiger deaths followed by 26 in Maharashtra and 14 in Karnataka.
    • There can be numerous causes for deaths as the population of tigers is huge and a standard operating procedure (SoP) is followed to ascertain the reasons. 

• Tiger deaths are under the scrutiny of the state as well as the NCTA.

Threats faced by tigers

• Poaching: Every single part of the tiger is traded in illegal markets. It is used in traditional Asian medicine which has no medicinal value at all, making the deaths of these animals for this purpose unnecessary.
• Habitat Loss: Tigers have lost 93% of their historical range as their habitat has been destroyed or degraded by human activity.
• Human-Wildlife Conflict: With smaller forests to hunt in, tigers are forced to kill livestock and when they do the farmers often retaliate and kill the big cat.

Tiger Conservation Efforts 

• CATS:
  • Fourteen out of India’s 52 tiger reserves have received the Conservation Assured Tiger Standards (CATS) accreditation for meeting a set of standards for effective conservation of big cats. 
    • It is a globally accepted conservation tool that sets best practices and standards to manage tigers and assessments to benchmark progress. 

• Project Tiger:
  • “Project Tiger”, now ongoing as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, was launched by the Government of India in 1973 in nine reserves of different States (Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) over an area of approximately 14,000 sq. km.

• Since then, the project coverage has expanded considerably to 52 tiger reserves (TR).

• International Collaboration

• India has signed a protocol on conservation of tigers with China and a Memorandum of Understanding with Bangladesh on conservation of the Sundarbans. 
• Also, the Cabinet has given the nod to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Myanmar to combat timber trafficking and conservation of tigers and other wildlife.
• Besides bilateral engagements are being carried out with Bhutan, Nepal and Cambodia. 
  • The Government of Guatemala has solicited collaboration with the Govt. of India to safeguard their Jaguar population.
• A tripartite, institute level has been signed between the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun and the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences for tiger conservation.

Technological advancements in tiger conservation

• M-STrIPES (Monitoring System for Tigers Intensive-Protection & Ecological Status):
  • This is an android application that has three distinct modules namely the Patrol module, Ecological module and Conflict module. 
  • The Patrol module inter-alia is a mechanism to ensure accountability of front line staff vis-à-vis anti-poaching efforts and is useful for the tiger reserve management to strengthen protection measures, based on data that is generated through M-STrIPES. 
    • The ecological module assists in collecting biological data from the field which is utilised in the quadrennial All India Tiger Estimation and annual Phase IV exercise.
• UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)
  • The project titled ‘E-Bird Technology for Tiger Conservation: Development and Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as a Surveillance and Monitoring tool for Protection of Tiger and Capacity Building of Frontline Staff’ has commenced in13 tiger landscapes. A trainer drone has been fabricated along with the development of a trainer manual for field staff.
• Conservation Genetics
  • This technique of non-invasive genetic sampling of tiger scat is used in low tiger density areas to detect tiger presence or a minimum number of tiger individuals. 
  • DNA extracts from scat samples are collected from the field and identified by a tiger specific DNA marker. 
  • This has also been used to carry out a genetic assessment of relatedness between India’s tiger populations.
• Artificial Intelligence
  • Owing to a large number of camera traps, photographs of tigers and wildlife collected during the 2018 cycle of the All India Tiger Estimation (nearly 3.5 crores) concepts from artificial intelligence were used to segregate species wise photographs.

Recent Developments

• Ongoing process to protect tigers like patrolling is going on, and a lot of people have been arrested for poaching too. 
• Everything is being done to protect the tigers, but nearly 30 per cent of them are outside tiger reserves which make it tough to track.

Suggestions to manage human-tiger negative interactions

• Material and logistical support:
  • Funding support through the ongoing centrally sponsored scheme of Project Tiger is provided to tiger reserves for acquiring capacity in terms of infrastructure and material, to deal with tigers dispersing out of source areas. 
• Restricting habitat interventions:
  • Based on the carrying capacity of tigers in a tiger reserve, habitat interventions are proposed or restricted through an overarching Tiger Conservation Plan. 
  • In case tiger numbers are at carrying capacity levels, it is advised that habitat interventions should be limited so that there is no excessive spillover of wildlife including tigers thereby minimizing man-animal conflict. 

• Standard Operating Procedures:

• The National Tiger Conservation Authority has issued the following three SOPs to deal with man-animal conflict.

Sources: IE