Tiger occupied areas in India expanding, says recent study

Shedding positive light on the current position of tigers in the country, the study says “India’s tiger recovery offers cautious optimism for megafauna recovery, particularly in the Global South.”

Tiger-occupied areas in the country grew by approximately 3000 sq km each year marking a 30 per cent increase in their territory over the last two decades, said a recent study published in the journal ‘Science’. 

Connecting the threads of ecological conservation with socio-economic and political factors, the study stated the tiger population is thriving not just in “high-quality protected areas” but also in areas with lesser poverty, armed conflicts and land alterations.  

The study found that tigers “persistently occupied human-free, prey-rich protected areas” but were also present in areas with close proximity to the human population provided the areas had socio-economic prosperity and political stability.

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Tigers were found to co-exist with a population of 60 million people shattering myths surrounding carnivore and human conflict. However, the areas where the tiger population was found to be suffering were the poor districts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where people laid out traps for bushmeat hunting leading to indiscriminate killing of both prey and predators.

Tiger reserves were also affected in certain parts of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and eastern parts of Maharashtra, experiencing insurgencies from Naxalites. 

“It’s not human density, but what matters is the attitude of people. Sparing land for tigers enabled land sharing, provided that socioeconomic prosperity and political stability prevailed,” Y V Jhala, a co-author of the study was quoted by Deccan Herald

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Investing in the socio-economic upliftment of the people is crucial for biodiversity recovery, the study proposed. It also noted that controlling instances of armed conflict in certain areas led to recovery of tigers in those areas. 

Shedding positive light on the current position of tigers in the country, the study says “India’s tiger recovery offers cautious optimism for megafauna recovery, particularly in the Global South.”

India, despite hosting only 18 per cent of the world’s tiger habitat, boasts the largest tiger population in the world with over 3600 tigers making up 75 per cent of the global population. 

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