Watch: How India’s Tigers Are Counted
A volunteer from Bandhavgarh records his experiences of tiger estimation
Mumbai: What does one look for when counting India’s tigers? How do you recognise different signs? What to do if you encounter a wild animal? India’s tiger census, formally known as the All India Tiger Estimation (AITE), is a nationwide exercise carried out roughly every four years to assess not just how many tigers exist, but where they are found and what condition their habitats are in.
The exercise is conducted by an army of forest rangers, officers and volunteers. IndiaSpend spoke with Viv Sharma, a volunteer in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh National Park, about his experience during the exercise. Watch more in the video below.
The last tiger census—which credited 60 research biologists, 41 technical assistants, 35 interns and volunteers in addition to the officials—found a minimum estimate of 3,167 tigers across India. It covered over 641,000 sq km of forest.
According to the All India Tiger Estimation Field Guide 2021, the process unfolds in two stages. The first stage involves extensive ground surveys across potential tiger habitats to record signs of tiger presence, prey availability, habitat quality and human disturbance, increasingly using a digital platform to standardise data collection.
In the second stage, tiger numbers are estimated in selected areas through camera-trap based capture–recapture methods, where individual tigers are identified using stripe patterns and analysed through statistical models, as described in the Status of Tigers in India reports.
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