Tigers Return to India

At least 20 tigers have resurfaced in a tropical rainforest in western India, almost three decades after it was thought that poaching had wiped them out forever. The big cats were sighted over 300 square miles of mountainous forest in the western state of Maharashtra, bringing rare good news in a country that is rapidly losing its wildlife due to poaching and habitat destruction. “There was good forest cover, an ideal habitat and an ideal prey base but tigers were not sighted in the Sahyadri range since the late 1970s,” Vishwas Sawarkar, former head of the state-run Wildlife Institute of India, said. “ My estimate is there are at least 20 of them now,” said Mr Sawarkar, adding that the discovery was made during a nationwide tiger census.

India is believed to have half the world’s surviving tigers, but according to a census in 2001 and 2002, their numbers have dwindled to 3,642 from 40,000 a century ago. Conservationists say the actual number is between 1,300 and 1,500, based on the initial findings of the census. Experts said the last remaining tigers could have benefited from poachers moving on to other areas in search of their lucrative prey, whose body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicines and whose skins fetch thousands of dollars. Conservationists hope Sahyadri will be declared a tiger reserve.

(Periscope Review, №11, 2009)