Union Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday said Kaziranga has brought fresh hopes on tiger conservation in the country with the National Park registering a density of about 30 tigers over 100 square kilometres of the park, which he described to be the highest in the country.
After a field visit the Minister told journalists inside the world heritage site, that such a high density indicate that Kaziranga with a total area of more than 1000 square km area should have more than 100 tigers. Mr. Ramesh said that figures of tiger census would be out in November. Assam Forest and Environment Minister Rockybul Hussain accompanied Mr. Ramesh in field visit.
Regional offices
The Union Minister announced that four regional offices of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) would be opened in Bangalore, Nagpur, Kolkata and Guwahati to spread out activities of NTCA to field areas and to ensure that it did not remain Delhi-centric. The NTCA headquarters in Delhi would also look after northern India.
Of the 39 project tiger areas in the country situation in nine are good, 12 are satisfactory while the scenario in 18 project tiger areas is precarious, he said. Mr. Ramesh said tigers have become endangered but not extinct in India. He said about 50 to 60 per cent of wild tiger population of the world is found in India and this has been possible because of huge and sustained efforts put under Project Tigers for conservation of the big cats.
Mr. Ramesh and Mr. Hussain were given a demonstration on how camera-trapping method is used for tiger census by wildlife biologist Firoz Ahmed of Aranyak, a society for biodiversity conservation, engaged in tiger census operation. The Ministers and top forest officials witnessed fresh pug marks of tigers inside the national park.
He said that if the State government wanted financial assistance to Kaziranga to double, the Central government would meet the demand as the barrier of treating Kaziranga as non-project tiger area broken.
Mr. Ramesh said that the Centre has offered Assam that whatever is required for helping filed staff of Kaziranga like night vision devices and for assistance for their mobility for instance, would be provided.
Keywords: Kaziranga, tiger conservation
Thanks Union Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh for your concern to various envirnomental issues. I never saw or heard about any Environment and Forest Minister before who has shown very keen interest in our envirnoment and animal resources. First time, we are noticing the department of forest to be very active and taking valuable steaps...thansk again Mr. Jairam Ramesh for your wonderful work and best of luck for your future work...
It will be nice if the Hon'ble minister can specify the tiger reserves that are good,satisfactory and precarious.Unfortunately,when the top dignitories visit the tiger project areas,elaborate arrangements are made and it is extremely difficult for the dignitories to judge the protection measures undertaken by just visiting a tiger reserve.So we will be in fool's paradise by assuming that Indian tigers are absolutely safe.
I want to associate myself with NTCA.
Please confirm how many tiger projects are in India?
Because Protected Area Network report, 2008 gives 37 tiger projects.
Very good steps of Mr. Ramesh (a fine minister). Thanks a lot to him.
I would like to partially agree that the government is trying to do something. But I also read this report that says there are more tigers in captivity than in the entire world, which is completely against Mr.Jairam Ramesh's statement. Between the statements from a single person and from a international body with a media house, I believe the latter. I think the public should not be misled.
Here is the article I was talking about -
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/02/10/tigers.gone/index.html
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