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India has announced a major expansion of its tiger monitoring programme, through ‘Phase IV’ of the national tiger estimation programme.
This initiated intensive, annual monitoring of tigers at the tiger reserve level, across protected areas in the country, from November 2011.
The methodology is developed by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), in consultation with experts, and will use statistically sound procedures to estimate numbers of both tigers and their prey.
The tiger monitoring protocol use camera traps, at a density of 25 double-sided cameras per 100 square kilometres, and a minimum trapping effort of 1000 trap nights per 100 square kilometres. (Note: Tiger reserve - see appendix)
This will provide a yearly indication of the status of critical tiger populations around the country, and will be critical to long-term management and conservation of tiger populations.
Prey population monitoring will be conducted simultaneously, using Distance sampling protocols. Distance sampling will be conducted along line transects already established in phase I, and will use a minimum of 30 spatial replicates for 2 km each, and a total effort of 300 km.
Do you know?
Royal Bengal tiger, is a tiger subspecies native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, and has been classified as endangered by IUCN as the population is estimated at fewer than 2,500 individuals with a decreasing trend. The Bengal tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh. Panthera tigris is the national animal of India.