India, home to most of the world\'s wild tigers, on Monday reported a rise in the animal\'s numbers for the first time in years in a rare piece of good news for conservationists.
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| Tiger cubs play with their mother at Assam State Zoo in Guwahati in 2010. |
The census found 1,706 tigers in India last year, compared with 1,411 in 2006, officials in New Delhi announced -- though they said much of the increase was due to more thorough counting.
"We have expanded the survey to cover the entirety of India and our estimate is now more accurate," said Rajesh Gopal of Project Tiger, the government\'s tiger conservation body.
Increased surveying included coverage of difficult terrain such as the Sunderbans mangrove forest, which straddles the borders of India\'s West Bengal state and Bangladesh.
The count -- using hidden cameras and DNA samples from droppings -- found 70 tigers in the Sunderbans, which was not included in the last census.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh welcomed the figures as "a very encouraging sign" but warned the upturn should not lead to complacency as the tigers\' habitat was being seriously reduced.
"The threat from poachers, international smuggling networks and powerful mining companies continue to pose threat to the endangered animal," Ramesh said.
"Four years ago, tigers occupied 93,600 square kilometres (36,000 square miles) but now the area has shrunk to 72,800 square kilometers," he said, adding that this was "a worrying" development.
More than half of the world\'s rapidly dwindling wild tiger population live in India, but the country\'s conservation programme has been struggling to halt the big cat\'s decline.
The current tiger population still remains a long way off the numbers registered in 2002 when some 3,700 tigers were estimated to be alive in the country.
There were thought to be around 40,000 tigers in India at the time of independence from Britain in 1947.
Conservationists said the increase in numbers indicates a general growth trend but that the decline in the total area occupied by the tiger needed urgent attention.
"Shrinking area is an added threat, we need to expand this to create a fresh base to be able to increase the tiger population in India," Belinda Wright, director of Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), told AFP.
Authorities across Asia are waging a major battle against poachers, who often sell body parts to the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market, and other man-made problems such as development leading to habitat loss.
In the last year, the Indian government has relocated nearly 3,000 families living in tiger reserves and plans to move another 50,000 families in the next five years.
