| Wild Life
Tiger
Tiger is charismatic animal. Tiger is India’s national animal and
indicates health of forests. Tiger is important for historical and
emotional reasons. Tiger is symbol of culture, religion, power and
history. However the number of tigers has declined drastically over
last century.
There are several reasons for declining number of tigers
1. Poaching - Illegal killing of tigers
2. Lack of protection
3. Low prey density
4. Poaching of prey species
5. Encroachment of humans in tiger habitats
6. Human Tiger Conflict
7. Lack of Accountability
8. Lack of Political Support
Challenges
There are several challenges in protecting tigers
1. The challenges in protecting tigers are different from the ones
at launch of Project Tiger in 1973. Large tracts of tiger habitat
had to be managed earlier and protected land was made available
in1973 under Project Tiger and this was successful in protecting
tigers.
2. Chinese had lost tigers to Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1980s
and looked for tigers and India was a choice.
3. So from 1990s large scale poaching began in India and India could
not adapt to increased demand for Tigers from Traditional Chinese
Medicine.
4. Traditional Chinese Medicine is thus responsible for recent tiger
decline in India despite tiger protection efforts by Government
5. There is human tiger conflict where tigers and humans are adversaries
since tigers move to villages and kill people and live stocks and
hence humans kill tigers to protect themselves and their live stocks.
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