Another count of the big cats in Bengal’s mangrove delta is set to start next week.
The annual camera trap exercise for an estimation of the number of tigers in the Sunderbans will start on November 27.
The annual exercise is conducted by the forest departments of the states that have tigers in the wild. The national tiger census, a quadrennial exercise, is conducted by the Centre.
The final report of the last national count, “Status of Tigers 2022”, was released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority on July 29 (International Tiger Day). The exercise had pegged the number of tigers in India and the Sunderbans at 3,682 and 101, respectively.
On Thursday, a field training was held for the staff at the Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR). Around 50 people who will be involved in the census learned about the camera settings and how to retrieve data from them.
“The exercise begins on November 27. The cameras will be in the forests for 35 days. This year, the exercise will be conducted in STR along with some areas of the South 24-Parganas division in the first phase. The remaining areas of the South 24-Parganas division will be covered in the second phase,” said Justin Jones, deputy field director, STR.
In total, 1,464 all-weather night-vision cameras will be placed in 732 strategic locations called grids — each 2sqkm grid will have a pair of cameras placed in opposite directions.
“The annual state-level exercise is just an estimate of the tigers based on the findings of the trap cameras. In comparison, the national count is a much bigger and detailed exercise. It takes into account several other factors in a habitat, like prey base and human interference,” said Nilanjan Mallick, director of the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, which includes the STR and the South-24 Parganas division.
In 2021-22, the findings of the state-level census were not released because the national census was under way.
In 2020-21, the state-level exercise pegged the number of tigers at 96 in the Sunderbans, the world’s only mangrove tiger habitat.
The last national count, which had estimated 101 tigers in the Sunderbans, counted 81 of them in the STR and the rest in the South 24-Parganas division.
The Sunderbans is spread across 10,000sqkm, a little above 4,000sqkm of which is in India. The rest is in Bangladesh. The Indian Sunderbans is split between the STR and the South 24-Parganas forest division.
The STR covers 2,585sqkm. It is made of the Sunderbans National Park (East and West), which is the core area, and the Sajnekhali Wildlife Sanctuary and the Basirhat Range, which form the buffer zones.
The tiger habitat in the South 24-Parganas division includes the Matla, Raidighi and Ramganga ranges.