PROCESS FOR ANALYZING TIGER MORTALITY

The rigor which goes into maintaining record of tiger deaths in India is as follows;

1. No tiger death is entered into the database, unless an authentic source from the State Government reports a tiger mortality.

2. Even if a tiger death is reported from third party sources to the NTCA, a confirmation is obtained from the State before recording it.

3. All tiger deaths are dealt as per SOP issued by the NTCA in this regard (available in public domain) under suitable provisions of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Non compliance is viewed seriously and in certain cases, if the situation so warrants, an inquiry is instituted by the Regional Office of the NTCA.

4. The onus of proving a case as natural or poaching, (with adequate evidences like Necropsy report, Pathology report, Coloured photographs, Forensic reports and other report as per the SOP format) rests with the State.

5. There may be instances, wherein, the necropsy report provides clinching evidence to ascertain cause of death.

6. However, in absence of such evidences, supporting reports as listed above are used to come to a conclusion.

7. This analysis is done at the NTCA Headquarters at Delhi. Once ascertained, a cause is finally ascribed to a tiger’s death. In the event of any doubt, in spite of the evidences, the case is closed as poaching.

NTCA has been maintaining the details of each and every tiger mortality events in India. In this page, the details of tiger mortality for the period 2012-2018 are given. Please use the navigation buttons given on the left for getting more information on tiger mortality classified into year wise, state, tiger reserve, death cause and status of case.

As per the stringent conditions set by the NTCA, all tiger deaths are considered as ‘poaching’ in the beginning. Supplementary details like post mortem reports, forensic and lab reports and circumstantial evidences are gathered for closing a particular tiger death case as either natural, poaching or unnatural but not poaching.

The details of all of tiger mortality events for the period 2012-2018 and the status of these case are given below. The figures indicate that 94.5% of recorded tiger mortality cases have been closed after scrutinizing the post mortem and forensic reports and just 5.5% of cases are pending.

Here the tiger mortality events from 2012-2018 are grouped into two categories namely the tiger mortalities that took place inside tiger reserve and outside tiger reserves. The data suggests that 54.73% of all the mortality events took place inside the tiger reserves and 45.27% of tiger deaths happened outside the boundary of tiger reserves.

Following are the details of tiger mortality for the period 2012-2018 due to causes such as natural, poaching and unnatural but not poaching.

Table showing details of tiger mortality due to various causes for the period 2012-2018

Following graphs shows the number tiger deaths observed in tiger reserves for the period 2012-2018.

This page will contain details of tiger mortality for tiger range states.

The tiger deaths recorded for the period 2012-2018 are grouped into month-wise occurrences.

Number of tiger mortality events recorded for the period 2012-2018 are given below: