India’s tiger fatalities are rising steadily. The country has lost 48 tigers in the last 22 weeks. The largest number of tigers have been killed in the premier Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand and in the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has confirmed that 19 of these deaths are clear-cut cases of poaching but wildlife experts claim poaching deaths could be much higher.
Tiger deaths reported in 2011 were 56 while the number of deaths reported in 2011 were 52.
A sharp rise in poaching has created a situation where Mr SP Yadav, deputy inspector general of the NTCA, admits that “Tiger reserve states are now afraid to report mortality of a tiger. But in order to ensure that all deaths do get reported, we now insist that someone from NTCA will be present for the post-mortem ( of a tiger).”
On May 15, minister of environment Jayanti Natarajan had disclosed that India had lost 32 tigers in the last five months. The last three weeks have seen tiger deaths rise by another startling sixteen in number. Mr Yadav admits that one of the NTCA’s biggest weaknesses has been in the field of intelligence gathering. “Intelligence gathering is the backbone of anti-poaching activities. Delay in reaction allows the poacher to get the upper hand,” he said.
The NTCA has mooted the setting up of an anti-poaching force with Karnataka being the first state to put this into practice.
The The National Tiger Conservation Authority has launched a detailed security plan for these tiger reserves and already thermal cameras have been operationalised in the southern part of Corbett National Park.
“We are launching an e-Eye, which is a 24x7 IT-based surveillance system across several tiger reserves,” Mr Yadav added.
The situation is spinning out of control because of the rising demand for tiger parts across Asia. The Dudhwa tiger reserve lies on the Indo-Nepal border on the foothills of the Himalayas.