India may have just 1,500 tigers

INDIA: India may have just 1,300 to 1,500 tigers left — less than half of the number believed to exist five years ago — conservationists say.

The final results of a state-by-state census are expected in December but at a conservation meeting during the week, a noted Indian tiger expert put the number of the cats left in the country at 1,500 or fewer.

“The indications are that the present tiger population in India is between 1,300 and 1,500,” said conservationist Valmik Thapar in New Delhi on Friday. Thapar said both wildlife experts and government officials were in agreement on the figure, a sharp drop from the 3,700 tigers believed to live in India in 2002.

Other wildlife experts, however, said the final figure from the new tally, which uses technology such as camera traps rather than relying on pug marks (paw prints) as past surveys did, was likely to be close to the one given by Thapar.

New Delhi, Sunday, AFP