National Tiger Conservation Authority
Why in News
Recently, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has clarified that the tigers in the country have shown a healthy annual growth rate of 6%.
- These findings are stated according to the quadrennial All India Tiger Estimation conducted in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018.
Key Points
- It has been observed that the recorded growth of 6% offsets natural losses and keeps tigers at the habitats carrying capacity level.
- The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained in that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available.
- For the period 2012 to 2019, the average tiger deaths per year is 94.
National Tiger Conservation Authority
- National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change.
- It was established in 2005 following the recommendations of the Tiger Task Force.
- It was constituted under enabling provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, as amended in 2006, for strengthening tiger conservation, as per powers and functions assigned to it.
Project Tiger
- Project Tiger is an ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change providing central assistance to the tiger States for tiger conservation in designated tiger reserves.
- India now has as many as 2,967 tigers in the wild, with more than half of them in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, according to the latest tiger estimation report for 2018.
- The population of tigers have increased by 33% since the last census in 2014 when the total estimate was 2,226.