A detailed report by the government assesses the status of tigers in terms of spatial occupancy and density of individual populations across India

India has 70 per cent of the world’s tiger population and the country is working with all 13 tiger range countries towards nurturing the majestic animal.

Announcing an increase in the number of big cats in India, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday said this reflected equilibrium in the nature. He was speaking at the release of the detailed report of Tiger Census on the eve of Global Tiger Day in New Delhi today.

The report assesses the status of tigers in terms of spatial occupancy and density of individual populations across India.

It compares information obtained from the earlier three surveys (2006, 2010 and 2014) with data obtained from the 2018-19 survey to estimate population trends at country and landscape scales, patch colonization and extinction rates, along with information on likely factors responsible for the changes in tiger status at the final spatial resolution of 100 km, an official statement said.

According to the environment ministry, the detailed report of the 4th All India Tiger Estimation is unique in the following ways:

· Abundance index of co-predators and other species has been carried out which hitherto was restricted only to occupancy

· Sex ratio of tigers in all camera trap sites has been carried out for the first time.

· Anthropogenic effects on tiger population have been elaborated in a detailed manner.

· Tiger abundance within pockets in tiger reserves has been demonstrated for the first time.

With the presence of nearly 30 per cent of India’s tigers outside tiger reserves, India had embarked upon assessing management interventions through the globally developed Conservation Assured | Tiger Standards (CA|TS) framework. This will now be extended to all 50 tiger reserves across the country.

The minister said tigers and other wild life are a kind of soft power India has to show on the international front. Javadekar pointed out that despite several constraints such as a lower land mass, the country has eight per cent of bio-diversity because of the culture of saving and preserving nature, trees and its wildlife.

The Environment Ministry is working on a programme in which efforts would be made to provide water and fodder to animals in the forest itself to deal with the challenge of human-animal conflict which is causing deaths of animals.

The LIDAR based survey technology will be used in this initiative for the first time. LIDAR is a method for measuring distances by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflection with a sensor.