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solonavi 13 September 2007 Discovery, Endangered & Extinction 119 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

reuters

At least 20 tigers have resurfaced in a tropical rainforest in western India, almost three decades after it was thought that poaching had wiped them out there, experts said on Tuesday.

The big cats were sighted over an 800 square kilometer (300 square miles) mountainous forest range in the western state of Maharashtra, bringing rare good news in a country that is rapidly losing its wildlife to poaching and habitat

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India is believed to have half the world’s surviving tigers, but according to a census in 2001 and 2002, their numbers have dwindled to 3,642 from 40,000 a century ago.

Conservationists say the actual number of tigers is between 1,300 and 1,500, based on the initial findings of the current census due to made public later this year.

No sightings of the big cats led many — including poachers and conservationists — to believe the tigers had been wiped out from the Sahyadri range, an unbroken chain of mountains that stretch along India’s western edge.

Experts said the last remaining tigers could have benefited with poachers moving on to other areas in search of their lucrative prey, whose body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicines and whose skins fetch thousands of dollars.

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Conservationists hope the authorities will now declare Sahyadri a protected tiger reserve.

“Once the tiger reserve is declared, the forest department must be given the necessary means to protect it,” said Rahul Kaul, director of conservation at the Wildlife Trust of India.

“But it shouldn’t be just lip service. We have had enough of that.”