By IANS
New Delhi : India has only 1,411 tigers left in the wild, less than half the numbers of the 2001 census, according to the latest estimates of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) released here Tuesday.
The last census in 2001-02 put the figure at 3,642 tigers.
The much-awaited census says India’s tiger population in the wild ranges between 1,165 and 1,657 – with 1,411 the figure at the middle of the range.
Releasing the highlights, head of NTCA R. Gopal said the government had refined its method for counting tigers through pugmarks and involved a number of independent experts, so there was now a high degree of confidence in the result.
The census found that Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of tigers in the country, an estimated 300, followed by Karnataka at 290, and then Uttarakhand with 178.
Three important tiger habitats were not covered by the census. Work is on in West Bengal’s Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, while in Jharkhand and in the Indravati forest of Chhattisgarh, the census was not carried out due to fear of Maoist guerrillas.
However, the census figures were extrapolated to cover these areas and thus the entire country, Gopal said.