Tiger population has declined in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot that has not yet been declared an ecologically sensitive zone, according to the latest estimate report released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.
National Tiger Conservation Authority conducting the assessment & report says tiger populations also declined in Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, although tigers were spotted for the first time in Himachal Pradesh and new areas in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Report says: India conducting a tiger population census every four years since 2006
>The number of tiger population has increased from 1,411 in 2006 to 3,167 in 2022. India is home to 75% of the world’s wild tigers.
>The areas under the Western Ghats World Heritage Land, a large number of which fall in the Karnataka-bound constituency, are the “most biologically diverse” in the country, the overlap between “wildlife and humans” due to development activities has led to a decline in tiger numbers population, the report said.
> Western Ghats tiger landscape is 1,600 km long and covers an area of about 1,40,000 km2.
>Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana contains 12 tiger reserves, 20 national parks and 68 wildlife sanctuaries. It is home to several endemic species such as the lion macaque, the Malabar giant squirrel and the nilgiri tahr.
>As of 2018, the tiger population in the region was estimated at 981 tigers. In 2022, 824 unique tigers were recorded.
Largest Tiger population in the world:
Although the Nilgiri cluster, which is from Nagarahole to Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple hills in Karnataka, has the largest population of tigers in the world and has contributed significantly to the colonization of tigers in the neighboring areas, the survey shows a decline in numbers in the area.
While tiger populations in protected areas have either remained stable or increased, occupancy outside reserves has declined significantly in areas such as the Wayanad landscape, the BRT Hills and the Goa-Karnataka border tiger areas. Most of the decline in the tiger population is in Karnataka, where most of the Western Ghats fall.
Despite its UNESCO World Heritage status, the Western Ghats face several environmental challenges such as deforestation, habitat loss and climate change, which threaten the survival of many species due to invasive species and the overall ecological balance of the region, the report said. .
Efforts by the environment ministry to declare one-third of the Western Ghats as an ecologically sensitive area since 2010 – an order that prohibits any environmentally damaging activity – have been opposed by the state governments of Karnataka, Kerala and Goa.
Survival for tiger population:
Conservationist Joseph Hoover said in response to the latest data that tiger numbers have not declined, but the population is not estimated to have increased. “According to experts, in 2015-16, tigers were estimated to survive only in the Western Ghats. But when you look at it, the numbers haven’t increased significantly. We can’t say that it has decreased, but it has not shown the growth that was expected”.
Karnataka’s forest department is under intense political pressure to keep animals such as tigers and leopards from leaving the forests, and has declared at least three leopards poachers in the past six months after protests from local residents, officials said, declining to be named.
On 23 February 2023, the Karnataka government told the state assembly that 41 people had been killed by elephants, tigers and leopards in the last 10 months, with the highest number of cases reported from the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.
Hoover said 11 tigers have been captured by forest officials in Karnataka in the past year. “It is difficult to solve this if there is no political will. There is a shortage of forest personnel and more people are not even being recruited. The central government’s environmental budget is not even 2%. How do you protect a forest that way,” Hoover said.
Written by: Vaishali Verma
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