It was a landmark initiative. Nine years later, however, India's tiger numbers remain equally suspect. So far, more than Rs 22 crore has been spent during two all-India estimation drives, in 2006-07 and 2010-11, to scientifically evaluate the status of the tiger. And yet all the government churned out were a few gospel figures for media consumption. When the subjective pugmark count method was junked, the promise was of moving away from banal number games towards effective monitoring.
Yet, the first all-India tiger estimation report said: "These population estimates have high variances, but since these estimates are not to be used for monitoring trends, they should suffice the need for converting a relevant ecological index to a more comprehensible concept of numbers."
Numbers make headlines, more so when spiced up by technical jargons. Sure enough, when minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh proudly announced the gain of 225 tigers last week, it made happy headlines. Accounting for the Sunderbans figures (70) that were not available in 2008, the minister preened, the population gain was a healthy 295. Read the full report here.
Source: Jay Mazoomdaar, The Economic Times.
