By james art 
Bengaluru, India-India has doubled the population of tigers for a little over a decade, protecting large cats from poaching and habitat loss, ensuring that they have enough prey, reducing the conflict between the human-life and an increase in the living standard of communities Near the tiger areas, a study published on Thursday.
The number of tigers increased from approximately 1.706 tigers in 2010 to about 3,682 in 2022, according to the national tiger protection authority, making India at home approximately 75% of the global tiger population. The study found that some local communities near tiger habitats have also benefited from increasing tigers due to foot trafficking and revenue imported from ecotourism.
The Science study says that India’s success “offers important lessons for tiger countries,” that efforts to protect can be beneficial for both biodiversity and nearby communities.
“The common conviction is that human density excludes an increase in the population of the tigers,” says Judvendradev Jala, a senior scientist from the Bengaluro -based Indian National Academy of Sciences and a leading author of the study. “What the study shows is that this is not human density, but the attitude of people, which matters more.”
The conventionalists and environmentalists of the wild welcomed the study, but said that tigers and other wild animals in India would benefit if output data were provided to a greater group of scientists. The study is based on data collected by India -backed institutions.
Arjun GoPalaswamy, an ecologist with experience in the evaluation of the wildlife population, said the evaluations of the official tiger monitoring program in India were “chaotic” and “controversial”. He said some of the figures in the study were significantly higher than previous tiger distribution assessments from the same data sets. But he added that the paper findings seem to have adjusted an anomaly repeatedly placed by scientists from 2011 related to the size of the Tiger population and their geographical distribution.
Tigers disappeared in some areas that were not close to national parks, wildlife shrines or other protected areas and in areas that witnessed increased urbanization, increased human use of forest resources and a higher incidence of armed conflicts, are He says in the study. “Without the community support and benefits, conservation is not possible in our country,” Jala said.
The tigers are distributed to about 138 200 square kilometers (53 359 square miles) in India, around the size of New York. But only 25% of the area is rich in prey and protected, and another 45% of tiger habitats are shared with approximately 60 million people, the study said.
The strong legislation on the protection of wildlife is the “spine” of tigers in India, Jala said. “Habitat is not a restriction. Happy quality is a restriction,” he said.
Wildlife biologist Ravi Chelam, who was not part of the study, said that while efforts to protect the tiger were promising, they must be expanded to other species in order to maintain the entire ecosystem better.
“There are several species, including the large Indian bustad and Karakal that are on the edge,” Chelam said. “And there really is not enough focus on that.”
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