Context:
India is celebrating 18 years of the successful tiger reintroduction at the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan. This landmark program marks the world’s first successful scientific translocation of big cats into a landscape where the species had become completely extinct.
Explanation:
- The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has identified 25 of India’s 58 Tiger Reserves for priority conservation interventions due to critically low or absent tiger populations.
- The initiative emphasises science-based tiger reintroduction, habitat restoration, prey augmentation and community participation to establish viable tiger populations.
- Project Tiger was launched in 1973 to conserve the Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), India’s national animal, through habitat protection and scientific management.
- Tiger conservation is now implemented under the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body established under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
- A Tiger Reserve consists of a Core/Critical Tiger Habitat (CTH) and a surrounding Buffer Area to balance conservation with sustainable livelihoods.
- Tiger reintroduction (translocation) involves relocating tigers from healthy source populations to suitable habitats where they have become locally extinct.
- Successful recovery depends on adequate prey base, habitat connectivity, wildlife corridors, genetic diversity, protection from poaching, and community participation.
- Habitat fragmentation isolates tiger populations and reduces dispersal, increasing extinction risk.
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Priority Tiger Reserves and India’s Conservation Strategy