‘70 p.c. of world’s tiger population is in India’

Himmat Singh Negi of National Tiger Conservation Authority speaking at a training programme at Theppakadu Mudumalai on Monday. 

The third cycle of “Vertical integration training in tiger reserve management” for forest staff above the ranks of forest range officers from across the country began here on Monday. The programme will continue for a week.

P.S. Somashekar and Himmat Singh Negi, Inspectors General of Forests, National Tiger Conservation Authority, Srinivas R. Reddy, Field Director of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and Raghuram Singh, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Project Tiger, were present.

At the event, Mr. Negi said that 70 per cent of the world’s tiger population was in India. In a powerpoint presentation to the trainees, Mr. Negi said that India had 10 per cent of the world’s population, hosted 14 per cent of all livestock in just 2 per cent of the land.

“As a result of such dynamics, conflict is part and parcel of the landscape,” he said.

He said that Project Tiger and tiger conservation in general, had learned from unfortunate instances, such as localised extinction of the tiger at Sariska Tiger Reserve.

With knowledge gained from such incidents, more areas had become protected, including small corridors where animals could move from one contiguous forest to another. “This will ensure that gene flow and also migration of animals from source populations occur,” Mr. Negi said.

Drone

He said that considerable budgets had also been earmarked to relocate villages falling within the core area of various tiger reserves, and that the Ministry of Defence had given the green signal for the use of drone technology in patrolling and maintaining a vigil on the reserves.

Mr. Reddy briefed the trainees about the functioning of MTR, and various other operational aspects.

Source:The Hindu