INDIA IS celebrating a milestone in its conservation journey with the completion of 50 years of Project Tiger-a flagship conservation programme for the country's flagship species. To mark the occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bandipur tiger reserve in Karnataka on April 9 and released the latest tiger census data that highlights a successful conservation story: India now has 3,167 tigers and 53 tiger reserves, spread over 75,796 sq km or 2.3 per cent of the country's geographic area.
Only 1,827 tigers were left in the wild when Project Tiger was introduced on April 1, 1973, by then prime minister Indira Gandhi. The project thus began by notifying eight national parks and wildlife sanctuaries as tiger reserves. Tiger numbers reached 3,700 in 2002, but then hit an alltime low of 1,411 in 2006, with Sariska tiger reserve in Rajasthan reporting a wipeout of the animal. That year, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 (WLPA), was amended to offer legal protection to tiger reserves and to allow the establishment of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body to oversee tiger conservation efforts. The number of tigers and tiger reserves have steadily increased since then. But this success has come at the cost of communities who have traditionally lived in and around these tiger reserves.
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