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India's Wild Tiger Population Is Up 30 Percent Since 2010

The country’s aggressive conservation efforts are clearly paying off.
​Tiger love. Image: Pixabay

The expansion of human civilization has sparked such a rapid, worldwide biodiversity loss that it's easy to feel overwhelmed or even defeated by the numbers. But the truth is that aggressive conservation strategies do pay off, as evidenced by the amazing comeback tigers in India have experienced over the last four years.

Thanks to the efforts of India's environmentalists, the wild tiger population has rebounded by 30 percent since 2010, from 1,706 individuals to 2,226 tigers at the last count, according to the Indian news channel NDTV.

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"While the tiger population is falling in the world, it is rising in India," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar told journalists in New Delhi, according to the BBC. "This is great news."

The successful growth of India's wild tiger population is no accident. As Derek Mead wrote in 2013, the governments of both India and Nepal have introduced a number of new tactics for protecting the majestic big cats. One of the largest threats the carnivores face, for example, is habitat encroachment by humans, which raises the thorny political issue of whether villagers or tigers should be given priority over reserved land.

Indian officials have confronted this problem by investing millions of rupees into compensating settlers who agree to clear out of key tiger habitats. "It is a long-drawn process because the villagers have to agree to move out," said forest conservation chief PS Somasekhar in a 2012 BBC article. "We can't force them to leave. We can only persuade."

Wild Indian tiger near a human settlement. Image: Grassjewel

Nevertheless, this initiative has definitely contributed the spike in tiger numbers. Thousands of people have been relocated, and entire villages have been wiped off the map to make way for larger ranges for the animals. It's a messy process, but it's crucial for giving populations the appropriate space to hunt, breed, and nurture new generations.

But while habitat loss is absolutely an existential threat, one that's difficult to slow, perhaps the greatest immediate threat to tigers—and several other endangered species—is rampant poaching. The 30 percent gain in the population would have been a lot larger without this perennial problem, especially since poaching has reached an all time high over the last four years. Almost two thirds of tiger deaths reported since 2010 were poacher kills, working out to an annual death rate of at least two percent of the global tiger population. It's an unacceptable hit to a population that, growth or not, still is tiny compared to historic levels.

There are strict penalties for poaching in place, and some regions have even made it legal to shoot and kill poachers on sight. The Indian government has also installed a massive network of 9,700 cameras in key tiger habitats, which is actually what enabled them to produce such an accurate count this year. Heavy surveillance has helped protect tigers from poaching in Russia, so it may curb the numbers in India as well. But unfortunately, until the multi-billion dollar poaching industry is completely dismantled from the bottom up, it will remain a thorn in the side of endangered species recovery. Indeed, it was the main driver of the species's dramatic population drop over the last century, from 100,000 individuals in the early 1900s to the most common estimate of around 3,200 today.

Regardless, it's enough to acknowledge that there is an answer to the human-driven endangerment of keystone species like wild tigers—species that naturally optimize the ecosystems of which they are a part. It's not an easy or politically expedient answer, and it involves spending lots of money, conceding a lot of land, and inconveniencing a lot of people.

But the Indian conservation community rightly thought it was worth it, and the results speak for themselves.