The letter added to the pressure on the government to adopt a new comprehensive methodology to count the tigers. K Ullas Karanth and seven Indian and international scientists said in their letter, "These (government's) assertions cannot be verified because details of tiger photo-captures at sampled locations, as well as of spatial extrapolations from these data, are incomplete."
Ramesh hit back by accusing Karanth, a member of the ministry's National Tiger Conservation Authority, of being intellectually dishonest and said the tiger estimation was correct. "Karanth is like the species (tiger) he studies - extremely territory-conscious and essentially a loner," he said in an email to HT.
However, the day Karanth's letter was published, asking the government to overhaul its method of estimation, Ramesh approved a new scientific plan for counting the big cat population. Read the full report here.
Source: Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times, New Delhi.
