India’s 2018 Tiger Census Enters Guinness World Records For ‘Largest Ever Camera Trap Wildlife Survey’

New Delhi: India’s 2018 tiger census has entered the Guinness World Records for being the largest ever camera trap wildlife survey, reported the Hindustan Times (HT).

The fourth edition of the census, which was carried out between 2018-19, was “the most comprehensive to date, in terms of both resource and data amassed,” the report added mentioning the Guinness World Records website.

The latest results of 2018 had shown that India now has an estimated 2,967 tigers out of which 2461 individual tigers have been photo captured, a whopping 83 percent of the tiger population, highlighting the comprehensive nature of the survey, the report added.

Reacting to the feat, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar was quoted as saying in HT, “The aim is to double the numbers achieved four years before the target.”

“Our census of tigers entered Guinness World Records because we have installed more cameras to monitor them as compared to other countries. Their population is nearly 70% of the world’s tiger population,” HT reported quoting the news agency ANI.  

According to the citation at the Guinness World Records the fourth iteration of the survey conducted in 2018-19 was the most comprehensive to date, in terms of both resource and data amassed, the report added.

“Camera traps (outdoor photographic devices fitted with motion sensors that start recording when an animal passes by) were placed in 26,838 locations across 141 different sites and surveyed an effective area of 121,337 square kilometres (46,848 square miles). In total, the camera traps captured 34,858,623 photographs of wildlife (76,651 of which were tigers and 51,777 were leopards; the remainder were other native fauna). From these photographs, 2,461 individual tigers (excluding cubs) were identified using stripe-pattern-recognition software,” the website reads.

“The country now has an estimated 2967 tigers as per the latest census. With this number, India is home to nearly 75% of the global tiger population and has already fulfilled its resolve of doubling tiger numbers, made at St. Petersburg in 2010, much before the target year of 2022,” Javadekar was quoted as saying in HT.