Will tigers survive in India?

ALERT member Jean-Philippe Puyravaud shares with us his views on tiger populations in India.  Once the dominant predator across much of Asia, the tiger today survives in just a tiny fraction of its former geographic range -- and with just a tiny fraction of its former numbers.

An Indian tiger (photo by Priya Davidar)

The latest tiger census in India shows that the number of tigers has increased, by nearly one-third. 

That is good news, indeed, because India is crucial for tigers.  The country sustains about 70% of the world's tigers but with only 25% of the world's remaining tiger habit.

This excellent result could be attributed to the interest and commitment of the people of India towards their natural heritage, the protection provided by the Forest Department, the efforts of scientists, and the enormous contribution of conservation organizations.

These findings should be celebrated and emulated in richer countries who talk about eradicating wolves -- such as Canada -- or decommissioning nature reserves -- such as Australia.

The finding that tigers have evidently increased has sparked a lot of reaction.  Journalists have celebrated the fact that the tiger is “saved”.   On the basis of the good news, the pro-development Government of India has wasted little time while proposing to build four-lane highways through several tiger reserves.

But is the tiger in India really safe?  To illustrate, I made a graph with 150,000 tigers -- a plausible number -- at the dawn of the Indian Civilization.  Ignore the massacres by British trophy hunters and imagine a smooth decrease of the tiger population over the past 3,000 years.

Tiger numbers fell to an all-time low in 2006 and have increased marginally over the past decade.  What overall trend do you see?

India's catastrophic decline in tiger numbers

The recent increase in tiger abundance -– in spite of being good news -- is effectively invisible.

I am not a proponent of “repopulating” India with tigers, but what the graph suggests is that unless the tiger population recovers to several thousand individuals, the species is still tremendously vulnerable in India.

And if this is the status of tigers in India -- which sustains seven-tenths of the global population -- how will it fare elsewhere?

We should celebrate the good news that tiger populations in India have made a marginal recovery. 

But let's not forget that the species is still staring into the abyss -- the victim of catastrophic declines and not far from global extinction.