Study says government counts of tigers in India are ...( (MAY 29 2003) A method used by India's...)

(MAY 29, 2003) A method used by India's government to count tigers for the past 30-plus years has produced largely inaccurate data, resulting in poor conservation practices, according to a study led by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), published in the latest issue of the journal Animal Conservation. The study was a collaboration among several leading ecologists from WCS, US-Geological Survey, WWF-USA, Smithsonian Institution, University of Minnesota and the Wildlife Institute of India.

The study says that counting tiger "pugmarks" or track prints, a technique developed in 1966 but never published in a scientific journal, is still used by India's government as the exclusive method to count tigers. Yet the method is scientifically flawed for several reasons.

The authors of the study charge that by setting itself the impossible goal of counting all individuals of a secretive species across thousands of square miles of rugged landscape, the "pugmark" census is doomed to failure. This in turn has led to field managers reporting increases in tiger numbers even in cases where mounting evidence showed protection had deteriorated.

"Trying to estimate tiger numbers across India using the pugmark census is an impossible task," said the paper's lead author Dr. Ullas Karanth, a WCS conservation zoologist who has studied tigers for the past 20 years. "Money and effort spent on counting pugmarks can be better used on simpler, statistically sound monitoring methods that can really help save tigers."

According to the study, in 1999 alone, the Indian government spent some $10 million on tiger-related conservation measures, while another $1.75 million came in non-governmental donors. However, the authors say that it is virtually impossible to measure the effectiveness of this investment using traditional monitoring methods.

Karanth and his co-authors say that "statistically robust" alternatives should be adopted to monitor tigers
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Contact: Stephen Sautner
ssautner@wcs.org
718-220-3682
Wildlife Conservation Society
29-May-2003

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