India Lost 550 Tigers In The Last Five Years: 144 Due To Hunting, 290 Still Being Investigated

Indian parent and tiger cubs illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Brian Gratwicke)

JAKARTA - India has lost more than 550 tigers to poachers and natural causes in the last five years, the government said.

Tigers are protected and endangered animals in India. Conservation has been the government's top priority in recent decades, as the country is home to about 3.000 major cats, two-thirds of the world's tigers that live in the wild, according to the 2019 census.

Young Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Arwini Kumar Choubey told parliament, 551 tigers have died in the past five years, including 114 being hunted by poachers.

"One hundred and twenty-eight tigers died because of natural causes while 114 became prey to hunters. Nine tigers died due to unnatural but unnatural causes and the deaths of 290 tigers are still under investigation," said Choubey, quoted by The National News on April 10. It is known that all dead tigers are adults.

New Delhi itself invests heavily in increased vigilance and large cat conservation actions under the Tiger Project, which aims to increase their population in the wild to 4.000 in the next decade.

In 2021, the Ministry of Environment allocated 3 billion rupees for the project, in order to improve security measures and stricter wildlife policies. The use of technology such as remote device cameras helps monitor and monitor tigers and collect their profile and photography data.

In some cases, villagers are moved from water catchment areas. So far, the number of tiger reserves in India has grown to 52 regions.

India has also built the world's largest underpass in Madhya Pradesh, a state with about 550 tigers in the country, to help the big cat safely cross the main highway.

Choubey said the government regularly reviews illegal anti-labor measures as part of its policy to protect the animal.

"Financing support is provided to tiger asylum to build and maintain patrol camps, a very important control tower to strengthen efforts to counter poaching," he explained.

Despite government efforts, tigers are still an endangered species, due to the threat of hunting and shrinking their habitats that cause human-animal conflicts.

Choubey said tigers had killed more than 100 people in India over the past three years.

Experts attribute the conflict to shrinking habitats due to development projects, overpopulation in nature reserves, and human settlements near protected areas, resulting in tigers getting lost in search of food.

It is known that a 75-year-old Indian farmer was killed by a tiger two months ago, nearly 12 hours after his grandson was also tortured to death by a tiger in the southern state of Karnataka.