Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh

What’s the toughest question to answer in Ranthambhore? You guessed it right. It is - How many tigers are there in Ranthambhore?

Tigers by their very nature are elusive and are not the easiest animals to find. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get their exact numbers in any wild area, specially in large and dense forested areas. Ranthambore is neither large nor dense. The Ranthambhore tiger reserve is nearly 1400 square kilometers in area but of these 1400 square kilometers, only a small part (of slightly under 300 square kilometers - the part known as Ranthambore national park) has tigers. The rest of the Ranthambhore tiger reserve is not a good enough habitat for tigers, where the odd tiger may stray in occasionally for a short duration of time. This part has too much of human disturbance (mainly cultivators and cattle herders – the number one enemies of wildlife in India) and not enough prey base.

So how tough is it to estimate the number of tigers in a place like Ranthambhore? I would say that it is not easy but at the same time Ranthambhore (because it is a dry deciduous forest) is the easiest place, amongst all the Indian tiger reserves, in which to conduct a tiger census. A tiger census is always an estimation with some margin of error. If you get together a small group of people who know the terrain of Ranthambhore and are willing to work hard (and none of them have to be tiger experts) to conduct a tiger census in Ranthambhore, the margin of error should be between 5 to 10 percent.

Since the time Project tiger was launched in 1973 the different tiger reserves in India used the

Recently the Project Tiger funded an extensive census of tigers in all the tiger reserves in India and the results were scary – between 1200 and 1500 tigers in all of Indian wilderness. It was carried out by Wildlife Institute of India using lots of camera traps – the only proper way to do a tiger census.

What do they have to say about how many tigers are there in Ranthambhore? 31 including all the cubs. Before I read this data I thought there were 32 including cubs. I could be wrong.

This nationwide census finally put to end the big stupid debate that was going on about tiger numbers in India with people like us claiming no more than 1000 to 200o and the government claiming 3000 to 4000. And it woke the nation up. The Prime Minister is now acting tough and we have a lot of hopes from him. he is a great man who can really act when required.

I am posting some interesting pictures that came out from the camera traps used in this census in Ranthambhore none of which are mine and don’t ask me how I got them. Some people may get sacked if I answered that. These pictures have been taken with Indian tax payers money and since I am one of those I have a right to post them.

Male for sure.

There are a series of pictures of this guy and he is not supposed to be here. After a few pictures he started waving to the camera.

They are not supposed to be there either