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Hundreds Begin Massive Tiger Count in India

Wed Jan 14, 5:15 AM ET Add Science - Reuters to My

 

 

By Kamil Zaheer

 

SAZNEKHALI, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of forest guards and

volunteers with firecrackers and nylon nets began scouring a swampy

mangrove forest in India Wednesday for tigers, kicking off one of

the world's largest censuses of the animal.

 

 

 

Wearing fiberglass protective vests, dozens of teams in speed boats

moved across the riverine Sunderbans delta to determine if the tiger

population had fallen in the region.

 

 

" The census is vital to ensure the survival of the endangered tiger

as already four of eight sub-species in the world have become

extinct, " said Pradeep Vyas, field director of the Saznekhali tiger

reserve, 60 miles south of Calcutta.

 

 

India, with around 4,000 tigers, has the world's largest tiger

population and the Sunderbans ecosystem, divided between India and

Bangladesh, is home to the largest numbers of tigers in a single

region anywhere in the world.

 

 

While the number of tigers in the country has plunged from about

40,000 in 1947 due to poaching and killing by villagers, the drop in

the Sunderbans delta has not been so alarming.

 

 

The tiger population in the Indian part of the delta fell to 271 in

the 2001 census from 284 in 1999, and officials say this was due to

natural deaths and not poaching or killing by people encroaching

into the area.

 

 

Teams of eight to 10 people, equipped with firecrackers, nylon nets

and rifles fanned out from Saznekhali to make plaster of Paris molds

of tiger paw prints to try and determine the number of the cats.

 

 

These censuses can be very dangerous as many of the tigers are man-

eating and there are also crocodiles in the sparsely populated

Sunderbans.

 

 

Last year, Royal Bengal tigers in the area killed at least six

villagers while in 1995, one forest ranger was killed in an attack

by a big cat during a census.

 

 

" The census is sometimes scary because, while taking pug marks of

tigers, we can see a tiger less than half a kilometer away. But it

is also exciting, " said Gopal Krishan, a forest guard with 17 years

of experience in tiger counts.

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