International Tiger Day 2020: India has doubled its tiger population ahead of target
International Tiger Day 2020: Tigers are considered as an 'Umbrella Species' as their conservation saves many other animal species. India has doubled its tiger population ahead of the target year of 2022. Project Tiger, launched in 1973, has been a success story despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges of poaching, loss of habitat, human and wildlife conflict and climate change.
International Tiger Day is held on July 29 every year. It was launched in 2010 after the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit. The Summit was held to raise awareness about the sharp decline in the number of wild tigers, leaving them on the brink of extinction.
Union Ministers and and wild life lovers have been tweeting interesting facts about International Tiger Day. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar posted a short video on Twitter, talking about how the phenomenal success was achieved. "15 months, survey of 3,81,400 sq km of forest area and 5,93,882 man days...," the video said. "Project Tiger was launched in 1973 with just nine tiger reserves. Today, India has 50 reserves with 2,967 tigers," Mr Javadekar tweeted.
Piyush Goyal, who hold the portfolios of Railways and Commerce and Industry in the Narendra Modi cabinet, wrote on the microblogging site: "Balancing between modernisation and conservation, PM has been on the forefront to save tigers...".
Not only tigers, there are 30,000 elephants, 3,000 one-horned rhinoceros and over 500 lions in the various wild life sanctuaries of the country.
Across the world there are currently 13 tiger range countries - India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.