New estimates of India's tiger population are depressing

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Tigers in the twilight Friday, 10:59 AM

 

Sep 7th 2006 | DELHI

From The Economist print edition

New estimates of India's tiger population are depressing

 

FOR over a decade, India's conservationists have warned of a steep and

officially-denied decline in the country's Bengal tigers, which are poached

for their valuable pelts and also, for use in Chinese medicine, for their

bones, teeth and penises. The government has insisted the tiger population

is stable at around 3,500—down from over 4,400 in 1989, but better than

1,800 in 1973, when Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, founded a

conservation authority called Project Tiger to save them. But the latest

research is hard to refute: estimates by conservationists, and some

officials, put the population at 1,200-1,500.

 

No Indian leader since Mrs Gandhi has shown much interest in protecting the

great felines, including the current head of her Congress Party, her

daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi. She is keener to woo the tribal folk

encroaching on the tigers' shrinking forests. Hence the Congress government

is toying with proposals for a new Tribal Bill that would give land rights

to forest dwellers. That would give poachers even readier access to their

prey. Also, last month leftist parties insisted on changes to new wildlife

legislation that weakened a proposed new anti-poaching unit and conservation

watchdog, the National Tiger Conservation Authority, that had been intended

to be more powerful than Project Tiger. Valmik Thapar, a conservationist,

says India will have 300 to 400 tigers in four years.

 

Frail hopes rest on a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in Geneva next month, at which

America may perhaps argue for a ban on trade in endangered species where

tigers are not protected. That would hurt India's exports of rare plants.

But it might help its horribly endangered tigers.