Empowered women of the tiger land
With their backs to the wall, the brave women of Sundarban don’t look for promises.
Due to the efforts of the Government of India through the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the tiger has been taken from the brink to an assured path of recovery which is evident in the findings of the quadrennial All India Tiger Estimation conducted in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018.
These results have shown a healthy annual growth rate of tigers at 6%, which offsets natural losses and keeps tigers at the habitats carrying capacity level, in the Indian context.
For the period 2012 to 2019, one can observe that the average tiger deaths per year in the country hover around 94, which is balanced by the annual recruitment as highlighted by this robust growth rate. In addition, the National Tiger Conservation Authority has taken several steps under the ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Project Tiger to address poaching, which too is significantly controlled as seen in the confirmed poaching and seizure cases.
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The presentation of data over a long time frame spread across 8 years indicates an intent to imprint the gullible reader with large numbers which may cause undue alarm. Also, not adequately covered is the fact that 60 per cent of tiger deaths in India are not attributable to poaching.
The NTCA, through a dedicated Standard Operating Procedure, has a stringent protocol to ascribe a cause to a tiger death, which is treated as unnatural, unless otherwise proved by the State concerned through submission of necropsy reports, histopathological and forensic assessments besides photographs and circumstantial evidence. It is only after a detailed analysis of these documents that a cause is ascribed to a tiger death.
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