Kolkata: The all-India tiger estimation exercise will kick off in the Sundarbans on 25 November.
According to Rajendra Jakhar, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve Field Director, 1484 trap cameras will be placed across the tiger reserve and divisional forest areas spanning over 4000 sq kms. The deployment will continue till 30 November.
This will be followed by sign surveys on 11 to 12 December. These will be conducted along the creeks to find out.
Cameras will be active for a minimum of 45 days at each location. A total of 15 teams with 250+ staff will be deployed across the landscape for placing and retrieving cameras.
For this purpose, 90+ forest staff underwent training under the guidance and presence of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) scientists and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NCTA) officials.
All the data generated and gathered will be recorded on an updated version of the M-STrIPES Ecology app.
The sign survey work will start on 11 December, as this app was being updated.
Under the sign survey, forest staff will navigate creeks and canals on boats and look for signs of any animal, including tigers, wild ungulates, small cats, primates, crocodiles and even otters that will be e-fed on the app.
This all-India exercise is conducted every four years. Sundarbans was home to 101 tigers as per the last exercise in 2022, the results of which were published in 2023.
Tiger density was found to be about 4.3 per 100 sq km, close to its carrying capacity of around 4.7. The female-male ratio was pegged at 2:1.