Tiger conservation in India saved one million tonnes of CO2: Study

NUS researchers find that project prevented deforestation, mitigating carbon emissions

- Cheryl Tan

Tiger conservation in India – aimed at rescuing the country’s iconic big cat fromextinction–has a dual benefit of mitigating carbon emissions by preventing deforestation, a recent study has found.

At least one million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) have been saved thus far – a climate co-benefit reaped from decades of tiger conservation, according to the study conducted by researchers from the National University of Singapore’s Centre for NatureBased Climate Solutions (NUS CNCS) which took just over a year.

There are 53 tiger reserves in India, which add up to an area of 75,796 sq km – about 2 per cent of the country’s land area. As at 2022, there were 3,167 ti gers in India, a 6.7 per cent increase from 2,967 in 2018, according to a report by India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority in April 2023.

Compared with other protected areas in the country, tiger reserves are more stringently monitored and get increased funding to ensure that the animals’ forested habitats are kept intact, to ensure sufficient prey and to provide safe breeding grounds for them to thrive.

To determine and quantify the climate impact of these reserves, researchers from NUS CNCS studied 45 reserves which have been around long enough for the impact of the tiger-conservation policy to be felt.