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Journalism of Courage
The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), which helped estimate the number of tigers in the county, said an issue should not be made of the fact that the cut-off age for counting tigers has been lowered from 1.5 years to 1 year. WII Director V B Mathur told The Indian Express, “It is very difficult to make out which individual is one year old and which is one-and-a-half-year-old. So, nothing much should be read into it. There is nothing sinister about it.” When asked why it was decided to lower the cut-off age, Mathur said, “Yes, it could have been avoided.”
Valmik Thapar, a conservationist, said, “It’s definitely good that the tiger count has increased, but it now also includes those tigers that were not counted in earlier exercises.”
Conservationists said the lowering of cut-off age means the mortality rate of tigers will have to be updated. “Earlier, a one-year-old tiger’s existence was supposed to be subject to various natural hazards and their survival was never guaranteed,” said a conservationist.
Thapar said, “Nobody is giving credit to former PM Manmohan Singh, who had stated this scientific enumeration of tigers by setting up a Tiger Task Force in 2005.”
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