say it isn't so

India may have just 1,500 tigers, say wildlife experts
NEW DELHI (AFP) - India may have just 1,300 to 1,500 tigers left -- less than half of the number believed to exist five years ago -- conservationists say.

The final results of a state-by-state census are expected in December but at a conservation meeting during the week, a noted Indian tiger expert put the number of the cats left in the country at 1,500 or fewer.

"The indications are that the present tiger population in India is between 1,300 and 1,500," said conservationist Valmik Thapar in New Delhi on Friday.

Thapar said both wildlife experts and government officials were in agreement on the figure, a sharp drop from the 3,700 tigers believed to live in India in 2002.

An Indian government official at the meeting would only call the number an "indication."

"It's a preliminary indication," Ravindra B. Lal, a senior wildlife official, told AFP on Saturday.

"It cannot be called an official figure. The population estimation is still going on."

Other wildlife experts, however, said the final figure from the new tally, which uses technology such as camera traps rather than relying on pug marks (paw prints) as past surveys did, was likely to be close to the one given by Thapar.

"I'd give you the same figure," Ravi Singh, head of WWF India, told AFP on Saturday. "These are based on the government's estimates. You can attach a fair value to them. They are reasonably accurate."

Experts have warned that because of the changes in methodology it is not possible to make a direct comparison between the old and new estimates but said it was still possible to note a sharp decline in the tiger population.

"What is important to understand is that the tiger is decreasing in particular areas," said Samir Sinha, head of the India branch of wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC.

"Tigers are largely now being consigned only to protected areas. They are being hit in a big way. It is a huge cause of alarm."

A partial survey released in May after more than half of India's 28 sanctuaries had been studied by the Wildlife Institute of India, which is conducting the census, estimated there were only about 500 tigers in those areas.

The sanctuary tiger population was about 1,500 in 2002, according to official figures. The rest were in the wild.

Poaching has decimated the population of the big cat but urbanisation and lost of forest cover are also to blame.

Tiger parts are used in traditional Chinese medicines, although international trade has been banned since 1993.

Conservationists have long complained that many Indian forestry posts lie vacant, while the staff that do exist have little in the way of funds, making them no match for poachers.

"People are prepared to risk their lives to kill tigers and we still haven't filled vacancies in our forestry department," said Thapar.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday called on states to hire more "frontline" forest staff to protect the big cat.

Indian official Lal said India was setting up regional offices for a new wildlife crime control bureau but cautioned conservationists not to get their hopes up.

"We are doing it at the fastest speed," he said at the meeting.

"But we should not be too optimistic that once we have a wildlife crime bureau wildlife crime will stop."