Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

■ JOINING THE DOTS TIGER TASK FORCE REPORTRecommendations1. The time has now come to go beyond the pugmark count method (aiming at a totalcensus), to a sample-based approach. The massive effort required to estimate the numbersof tigers over its entire range cannot be equally intensive throughout the range. It is,therefore, necessary to go in for different levels and kinds of efforts at a hierarchy ofspatial scales, focusing the more intensive effort in relatively limited selected areas.2. The effort at assessment of tiger populations and their habitats would have to look atwhole landscapes, as also at a range of ecological, social, economic, political as well asethical issues. Such an effort would have to engage natural and social scientists as well asresource managers, and be open to participation of all interested public as well.3. The most wide-ranging effort spanning the entire tiger range will have to aim at aqualitative understanding of (a) the state of tiger habitat, (b) the abundance of tiger preyspecies, (c) the abundance of tigers, (d) human impacts on tiger habitat and (e) peoplewildlifeconflicts. This wide-ranging effort must engage the extensive network of forestguards and watchers, as well as knowledgeable members of local communities. In thiscontext, it would be appropriate to take advantage of panchayat-level documentation ofbiodiversity in the form of ‘people’s biodiversity registers’ that is now being initiated as afollow-up of the Biological Diversity Act.4. Given that a substantial proportion of the tiger population occurs outside tigerreserves, we are increasingly beginning to appreciate the significance of conservationefforts focusing on the whole landscape. GIS-using satellite derived and other spatialinformation should serve as a key tool in this context. A qualitative understanding of theentire tiger range would be the starting point of designing more thorough investigations.A set of sample localities may then be chosen from the overall tiger range for moreintensive, rigorous investigations.5. The Tiger Task Force has reviewed the revised methodology for estimating/monitoring tiger status and its habitat proposed by the Project Tiger directorate and theWildlife Institute of India. It believes that this is a move in the right direction andendorses the methodology. It hopes that the national tiger estimation, which is to beconducted from November 2005, will be done using this evolved methodology.6. However, as many details will have to be refined, for instance, in terms of analysis ofthe data collected, the Tiger Task Force recommends that even as the work on estimationproceeds using this new methodology, the Project Tiger directorate must set up ascientific expert group immediately with expertise in relevant technical disciplines suchas wildlife management, population and community ecology, statistics, and remotesensing for overseeing the process. This group should work from the very inception of theprocess and assist in suggesting appropriate ways of analysing and interpreting the data.This expert group should in fact be funded to enable its members to engage in dataanalysis as well as do other research relevant to further development of the methodology.7. It is essential to facilitate involvement of a broad range of researchers in wildlifebiology, especially in the context of intensive studies at the field level. All effort must bemade to encourage and facilitate the intensive research and monitoring studies of sourcepopulation of tigers using a variety of tools — photo-identification and monitoring,camera traps, radio-telemetry and DNA-based genetic studies in different landscape units.The Tiger Task Force feels that it is important to put in place institutional mechanismsthat would streamline existing procedures for clearance and co-ordination of research andensure better utilisation of the research output.78 The way ahead