India to begin sixth cycle of tiger census; report to be released in 2026

India will begin the sixth cycle of All India Tiger Estimation (AITE), the report of which will be released in 2026. A meeting of state nodal officers in this regard was held at Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, recently.

Forest Department employees are being trained to carry out census, which involves analysing camera trapping and artificial intelligence.

The AITE began in 2006. Since then, five cycles have been completed (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022) and the sixth cycle in 2026 will mark two decades of the world’s largest wildlife survey. As per the 2022 tiger census report, India boasts of 3,682 tigers which is about 70 per cent of the global wild tiger population.

As the tiger population is increasing, increasing poaching incidents and the spillover of zoonotic diseases is a big concern.

The fifth cycle, in 2022, evaluated 51 tiger reserves, with the introduction of new indicators focused on climate change resilience, green infrastructure, invasive species management, and community-based conflict mitigation. The sixth cycle will evaluate 58 tiger reserves.

The AITE exercise also estimates the leopard population.

While India now boasts of rising tiger numbers and tiger reserves, poaching of big cats is a big concern.

A tiger found dead with its paws missing was found in Madhya Pradesh. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and Head of the Forest Force in Madhya Pradesh VN Ambade issued a stern warning to forest officials while accepting that in less than a month, five-six tigers and leopards had died.

According to a research published in National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) publication stripes, canine distemper, rabies, Nipah virus and bovine tuberculosis are no longer outliers, they are creeping realities.

The authors from National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research said in the research, “We already have documented cases of tuberculosis in leopards and lions. Our tiger monitoring teams must be trained not just in stripe-based individual identification but also in collecting and handling biological samples, reporting abnormalities in behaviour, and understanding landscape-level disease predictors.”