The tiger

PrelimsCurrent affairs on this: Big cats

The tiger, Panthera tigris, is India's national animal and the apex predator of its forests. It is Endangered on the IUCN Red List and in Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. It lives in tropical moist and dry deciduous forest, mangrove and terai grassland. Poaching is its main threat, with the loss of undisturbed core habitat and conflict with the people who live around the reserves. Project Tiger, launched in 1973 with nine reserves, is run by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a statutory body under the same Act; reserves have risen from 47 to 58 since 2014 and cover 84,488 sq km, about 2.6 per cent of India's land.

• Growth of about 6 per cent a year is uneven. A source population is a reserve where habitat, prey and tiger numbers are high; a sink has no breeding tigers or no connection to healthier forest, and connected forests allow a metapopulation with genetic exchange.
• Reintroduction releases a founder population and is a last resort: Sariska (2008) and Panna (2009) took hold with community support, Satkosia (2018) failed without it.
• Similipal in Odisha shows why exchange matters: about 37 per cent of its tigers are pseudo melanistic, with stripes far darker than normal, the result of inbreeding in an isolated population, so tigers from other States are being brought in to widen the gene pool.
• The NTCA puts 35 to 40 per cent of India's tigers outside notified reserves, which is where conflict now happens.

See also: Protected areas: the categories · Voluntary relocation from tiger reserves: Satkosia