50 years of Project Tiger: Prime Minister Modi to release new data on Tiger count in India

India will complete 50 years of Project Tiger on April 9; on this occasion, the Country will have a fresh count of the number of tigers present in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the latest figures on India's big cat population on Sunday.

The population of tigers in India has been on the rise since the launch of the tiger conservation campaign Project Tiger across the Country in 1973.

Since Tigers are the top predators in the ecosystem and play a critical role in balancing the act of nature, India introduced Project Tiger in 1973 to begin more rigorous efforts toward saving the big cat, which had been facing extinction at the time in the Country.

Thanks to Project Tiger, over the last 50 years, their numbers have gone up because of concentrated efforts under the campaign. According to the 2018 tiger population survey, India had 2,461 individual tigers.

The process of counting the tigers is not easy, and when the government began it all in 1973, forest staff had to use glass and butter paper to track tiger pugmarks. Every tiger has a unique and individual footprint, like human fingerprints, which helps in tracking. Rangers would trace the joint marks off the foot and trace it on butter paper to draw and record the footprint with the intention of using it to track that particular tiger in the future.

However, the whole process is more complex. The fact that the pugmarks differ when a tiger stands, rests, or runs adds discrepancies to the process.

Over the years, the practice evolved into a statistical method of counting. Forest staff has now turned to the capture-mark-and-recapture method, which is largely used to estimate the population based on a sample.

According to Northern Arizona University, the basic idea is to capture a small number of tigers, place a harmless mark on them, and release them back into the population. "At a later date, you catch another small group and record how many have a mark. In a small population, you are more likely to recapture marked individuals, whereas in a large population, you are less likely. This can be expressed mathematically."

How India counts Tigers:

As per the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the camera traps are set up in areas known to be frequently visited by the big cat, such as animal trails, nullahs, riverbeds, and car tracks. The cameras are placed at knee height, concealed from the general view of the animal camouflage to blend in the environment. The camera traps are set in pairs to capture both sides of the tiger.

Latika Nath, a wildlife conservationist, told India Today, "The tiger numbers are significantly higher than what the reports indicate since camera traps are only set up in the protected areas. With the increasing numbers of the big cat, they do venture out beyond the limits of national parks where we don't have camera traps.”

As the latest assessment is complete, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce the new number of tigers in the country at a mega event to celebrate the completion of 50 years of Project Tiger in Karnataka's Mysuru.