Fight threats emerging against world's largest wild tiger population
Fifty-four tiger deaths in a single calendar year is a record Madhya Pradesh could have done without. It is also the highest for the state ever since Project Tiger came into existence about half a century ago. December saw five deaths within a week, propelling India’s ‘Tiger state’ into the headlines even as the sixth cycle of the All India Tiger Estimation (AITE) survey got under way. With widespread outrage over the mortalities, the head of the state’s forest force warned his entire department that negligence would not be tolerated.
Madhya Pradesh’s place in the country’s tiger conservation story is extremely significant. It holds 785 of these majestic predators out of the 3,682 individuals counted during AITE 2022. If central India and the Eastern Ghats are home to the country’s largest populations, MP accounts for more than half of it. Going by the 46 deaths reported in the state last year, this year’s number may not sound too alarming. But rising incidents of poaching and retaliatory electrocution mean that the fatalities cannot be ignored.
Some old worries are back in a craftier and more ruthless incarnation. The clustering of deaths points to the work of poachers—of the 54 mortalities, 22 took place just outside tiger reserves. This is where conservation measures need a closer look. The fact that at least six cases were linked to the seizure of tiger parts also indicates that smugglers may be back in operation. On electrocution, though conventional logic points to disgruntled farmers setting traps to net crop-raiding animals, we must note that hunters also increasingly use such methods. India cannot lose to criminal networks the hard-earned gains it achieved over two decades of strong protection and habitat management.
Not all the problems are Madhya Pradesh’s alone. Given the healthy growth of tiger populations, poaching syndicates and wildlife smugglers are targeting the edges of forested areas, where protection is weaker. This is also where human-wildlife conflicts are raging across states, as shown by the recent spate of captures in Karnataka and Kerala. As India pushes forward with its most comprehensive tiger enumeration exercise, it would be prudent for the National Tiger Conservation Authority to address the emerging issues. At stake is the future of the keystone species in the country that’s home to two-thirds of them in the wild.