Project Tiger
About the Project:
- Project Tiger is a tiger conservation programme launched in November 1973 by the Government of India.
- The project aims at ensuring a viable population of the Bengal tiger in its natural habitats, protecting it from extinction, and preserving areas of biological importance as a natural heritage that represent the diversity of ecosystems across the tiger’s range in the country.
- The monitoring system M-STrIPES was developed to assist patrol and protect tiger habitats.
- It maps patrol routes and allows forest guards to enter sightings, events and changes when patrolling.
- It generates protocols based on these data, so that management decisions can be adapted.
Project Tiger’s main aims are to:
- Reduce factors that lead to the depletion of tiger habitats and to mitigate them by suitable management.
- The damages done to the habitat shall be rectified to facilitate the recovery of the ecosystem to the maximum possible extent.
- Ensure a viable tiger population for economic, scientific, cultural, aesthetic and ecological values.
Management:
- Project Tiger was administered by the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
- The overall administration of the project is monitored by a steering committee, which is headed by a director.
The various tiger reserves were created in the country based on the ‘core-buffer’ strategy:
Core area:
- The core areas are free of all human activities.
- It has the legal status of a national park or wildlife sanctuary.
- It is kept free of biotic disturbances and forestry operations like a collection of minor forest produce, grazing, and other human disturbances are not allowed within.
Buffer areas:
- The buffer areas are subjected to ‘conservation-oriented land use’.
- They comprise forest and non-forest land.
- It is a multi-purpose use area with twin objectives of providing habitat supplement to spillover population of wild animals from the core conservation unit and providing site-specific co-developmental inputs to surrounding villages for relieving their impact on the core area.
About Bengal Tiger:
- Bengal tiger subspecies of tiger inhabiting the forests, and wetlands of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal.
- The Bengal tiger’s appearance is distinguished from other tiger subspecies by its orange coat accented by prominent brownish-to-black stripes; a rare white-coated variant of the subspecies also exists.
- They are solitary hunters, preying primarily on ungulates (including deer and antelope), gaurs, and wild boars.
- The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) considers the Bengal tiger to be an endangered subspecies.
- The largest threats to Bengal tiger survival are poaching and the conversion of the Bengal tiger’s habitat to agriculture, roads, and other types of human-controlled space.
Syllabus: Prelims + Mains; GS III – Environment
