The day is celebrated worldwide to promote comprehensive efforts in safeguarding tigers and their natural habitats
New Delhi: Today marks the 13th year of International Tiger Day also referred to as Global Tiger Day. Launched in 2010 at St Petersburg, Russia, several countries, including India, Russia, and China, pledged to protect tigers, according to the WWF.
The day is celebrated worldwide to promote comprehensive efforts in safeguarding tigers and their natural habitats,
Thirteen tiger range countries collaborated to form Tx2, committed to doubling the tiger population by 2022,
With so much happening around the world, it is only appropriate that we talk about India’s 50 years of Project Tiger that has pulled back one of the most magnificent of the big cats, precariously teetering on the very brink of extinction to a respectable number.
But that it is still not enough since the animals are still not out of the woods , since the big cats are still not out of the woods, due the constant threat from poachers and loss of habitat. .
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said India’s, tiger population as of 2022 is 3,167. His remarks came about in April this year while releasing the latest tiger census data marking the completion of 50 years of ‘Project Tiger’.during his visit to the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka.
Project Tiger had come at a time when India’s tiger population had rapidly dwindled from 40,000 tigers at the time of the Independence, to below 2,000 by 1970 due to their widespread hunting and poaching.
At the census data release function, the Prime Minister had said: “The success of Project Tiger is a matter of pride not only for India but for the whole world. India has completed 75 years of independence; and another significant fact is that, 75 percent of the world’s tiger population is in India, he said.
Outlining his vision for Tiger conservation in the country, PM Modi also spoke about the launch of the International Big Cats Alliance (IBCA) that would focus on protection and conservation of seven major big cats of the world — Tiger, Lion, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Puma, Jaguar and Cheetah, with membership of the range countries harbouring these species.
To sustain a viable tiger population, the ongoing Centrally Sponsored Project Tiger,, was launched by the Government of India on 1 April 1973 in nine reserves of different States Assam, Bihar, Karnataka,
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal over an area of approximately 14,000 sq. km.
Project Tiger came about at a time when India’s tiger population had rapidly dwindled from 40,000 tigers at the time of the Independence, to below 2,000 by 1970 due to their widespread hunting and poaching.
Initially, the project covered nine tiger reserves spread over 18,278 sq km. Now, the project includes 53 tiger reserves sprawling over around 75,000 sq km of the region. Karnataka’s Bandipur was among the first nine reserves that were brought under the flagship programme,
Once the private hunting grounds of the erstwhile Maharajas, and nestled in the foothills of the Nilgiris, he Bandipur Tiger Reserve is located amidst the picturesque surroundings of the towering Western Ghats on the Mysuru-Ooty highway in Karnataka and is an important part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve that constitutes Karnataka’s Rajiv Gandhi National Park (Nagarahole) to its Northwest, Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary to its South, and Kerala’s Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary to its Southwest.
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