The last time National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) counted the country's national animal, it came up with shocking figure of just
1411 tigers living in the wild. Now, after a four-year gap, it is preparing for the tiger estimation exercise again. The country will soon know if the conservation efforts undertaken during this period have amounted to anything or the poachers have continued to win the game.
NTCA has come out with a programme to count tigers, co-predators, prey and their habitat in protected and non-protected areas of the states using a refined methodology. As a preliminary step, it has announced schedule and venue for the regional training workshops. In Maharashtra, the programme was scheduled to be held in Pench between October 12 and 15, 2009, but will be postponed due to elections.
When contacted, A K Saxena, chief conservator of forests (CCF) for wildlife administration, confirmed having received tiger estimation schedule. "As the dates are clashing with assembly polls, we have urged S P Yadav, joint director of NTCA, to reschedule the programme," Saxena told TOI. "We expect it to commence only after the counting is completed as some staff is involved in poll duty," he said.
In the regional workshop to be held in Pench (Maharashtra), participating states include Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Orissa. Fresh dates for programme in Pench will be announced soon. The second workshop will be held from November 2-4 at Corbett National Park, UP, in which Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttarkhand, and Uttar Pradesh will take part. The third is scheduled for November 10-12 at Bandipur, Karnataka, in which Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu will take part. The last one will be from November 17-19 at Kaziranga, Assam, to include Arunachal, Mizoram, Assam, and West Bengal.
The all India tiger estimation will commence shortly afterwards as a collaborative initiative between NTCA, WII, and NGOs. "The regional training workshops will build capacity of field personnel, followed by an eight-day protocol for primary and field data collection. Collation and analysis will be coordinated by the WII in collaboration with outside experts, with guidance by a specially constituted core committee," highly placed sources said.
The WII is being provided funding support for organising the workshops. The chief wildlife wardens have been asked to submit details of participants from states (including outside experts and civil society institutions).
The field directors of tiger reserves and officers in-charge of protected areas and forest divisions have also been directed to participate in respective regional workshops. The revised methodology will address an array of parameters related to the survival of tigers.
The first line transact census was conducted in the state in January 2006. Last year, pugmark and water-hole census to count prey-predators and herbivores respectively was not done following directives from NTCA, which decided to keep the age-old method of counting tigers at bay and adopt new technique to count tigers.