“India doubled its tiger population in a little over a decade by protecting the big cats from poaching and habitat loss, ensuring they have enough prey, reducing human-wildlife conflict, and increasing communities’ living standards near tiger areas,” reports The Associated Press:
The number of tigers grew from an estimated 1,706 tigers in 2010 to around 3,682 in 2022, according to estimates by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, making India home to roughly 75% of the global tiger population. The study found that some local communities near tiger habitats have also benefited from the increase in tigers because of the foot traffic and revenues brought in by ecotourism….Tigers are spread across around 138,200 square kilometers (53,359 square miles) in India, about the size of the state of New York. But just 25% of the area is prey-rich and protected, and another 45% of tiger habitats are shared with roughly 60 million people, the study said.
The growth of the tiger population coincides with growth in the human population. India’s population has grown by more than 200 million people since 2010, rising from about 1.2 billion people to more than 1.4 billion people today.
Neighboring Bangladesh is even more densely populated than India, yet it, too, is conserving key species. India has 1,275 people per square mile, while Bangladesh has 3,441 people per square mile — making Bangladesh denser than U.S. cities like Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Kansas City. It has little land to spare. It also is one of the world’s poorer countries. Yet, it is managing to save endangered species like Bengal tigers, whose numbers have grown over the last 9 years:
The latest published census report about the status of tigers in the Bangladesh Sundarbans [mangrove forest], which is considered to be only remaining habitat for tigers in the country, shows that Bangladesh is home to at least 125 adult tigers.
According to the IUCN Red List, the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is an endangered species globally. Data from the Global Tiger Forum shows that, as of 2023, there were 5,574 wild tigers living in 13 tiger range countries.
The survey in Bangladesh, conducted through camera trap evaluation in two different timeframes — Jan. 2 to Apr. 25, 2023, and Nov. 1 to Mar. 28, 2024 — indicates that the big cat population increased by 17.92% from the 2015 survey and 9.65% from the 2018 one…..The Sundarbans mangrove forest covers an area of 10,277 km2 (3,968 mi2), of which 6,017 km2 (2,323 mi2) is in Bangladesh, and the rest in neighboring India.
Other species once declared in Bangladesh due to habitat loss are making a comeback. That includes Nilgais, the largest antelope species in Asia. The animals are reappearing in northwestern Bangladesh, a country that was part of their historical range but where they were declared locally extinct in the 1930s due to habitat loss and hunting.
