India Has Nearly 3,000 Tigers, Up By A Third From 2014 Count

The results of the census were made public by PM Modi.

- Jacob Koshy

India has 2,967 tigers, a third more than in 2014, according to the results of a tiger census made public on Monday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Madhya Pradesh saw the highest number at 526, closely followed by Karnataka (524) and Uttarakhand (442). Chhattisgarh and Mizoram saw a decline in tiger population and all other States saw a “positive” increase, according to a press statement.

The survey, the fourth such since 2006, is a gargantuan exercise and conducted once in four years. The latest survey is the culmination of 15 months of forest officials surveying 3,81,400 square kilometres of forested habitat, installing 26,760 camera traps and wildlife biologists ferreting through 35 million images of wildlife — 76,523 of which were tigers (there can be multiple images of the same tiger). Nearly 83% of the estimated tiger population was captured in these images.