New Delhi, June 29 -- Despite India's tiger population growing steadily in recent years at an annual rate of six per cent, nearly half of the country's tiger reserves continue to have either no tigers or only sparse populations, prompting conservation experts to identify 25 reserves for priority recovery through carefully planned reintroduction programmes.
A roadmap released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), said tiger-deficient reserves should undergo "rigorous" scientific evaluation before any translocation or supplementation of animals is attempted. The report stressed that rebuilding tiger populations requires far more than simply moving big cats from one reserve to another.
Some 16 low-density tiger ...