From AFP via Yahoo News: news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008...80212160644
India's rare Royal Bengal Tiger population has plunged to 1,411, drastically lower than the estimated 3,700 believed to exist five years ago, officials said Tuesday.
Rajesh Gopal, who heads Project Tiger, a conservation programme launched in the 1970s, unveiled the latest figures and blamed "poaching, loss of quality habitat and prey" as the main reasons for the decimation.
The census, which took almost two years to complete, counted the big cat population inside dedicated reserves and those in forests, said Qamar Qureshi, a scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India which conducted the survey.
An earlier survey in 2002 had estimated the number of tigers in India at 3,700 -- with the population of those in protected sanctuaries estimated at 1,500.
Conservationists have long complained that many Indian forestry posts lie vacant, while the staff that do exist have little in the way of funds, making them no match for poachers.
Tiger parts are used in traditional Chinese medicines, although international trade has been banned since 1993.
Despite the alarming drop in numbers, both Gopal and Qureshi insisted "there is still hope" for saving the tiger and salvaging the programme touted as one of India's most successful conservation efforts.
The results of the latest survey offers authentic data as it used "more detailed and scientifically sound" techniques than earlier ones based on paw tracks, Qureshi told AFP.
"When you say about 3,700 tigers in 2002, that was just an estimate. So it is difficult to say whether the numbers have halved or not."
The latest numbers however "does not include the tigers in the Sundarbans," the world's largest mangrove forest straddling the Indian-Bangladesh border.
"We are still developing the methodology to count the tigers there, because of the difference in habitats," he said, but declined to give an estimate of numbers living in the mangrove forests.
India's rare Royal Bengal Tiger population has plunged to 1,411, drastically lower than the estimated 3,700 believed to exist five years ago, officials said Tuesday.
Rajesh Gopal, who heads Project Tiger, a conservation programme launched in the 1970s, unveiled the latest figures and blamed "poaching, loss of quality habitat and prey" as the main reasons for the decimation.
The census, which took almost two years to complete, counted the big cat population inside dedicated reserves and those in forests, said Qamar Qureshi, a scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India which conducted the survey.
An earlier survey in 2002 had estimated the number of tigers in India at 3,700 -- with the population of those in protected sanctuaries estimated at 1,500.
Conservationists have long complained that many Indian forestry posts lie vacant, while the staff that do exist have little in the way of funds, making them no match for poachers.
Tiger parts are used in traditional Chinese medicines, although international trade has been banned since 1993.
Despite the alarming drop in numbers, both Gopal and Qureshi insisted "there is still hope" for saving the tiger and salvaging the programme touted as one of India's most successful conservation efforts.
The results of the latest survey offers authentic data as it used "more detailed and scientifically sound" techniques than earlier ones based on paw tracks, Qureshi told AFP.
"When you say about 3,700 tigers in 2002, that was just an estimate. So it is difficult to say whether the numbers have halved or not."
The latest numbers however "does not include the tigers in the Sundarbans," the world's largest mangrove forest straddling the Indian-Bangladesh border.
"We are still developing the methodology to count the tigers there, because of the difference in habitats," he said, but declined to give an estimate of numbers living in the mangrove forests.
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