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Critical Topics and Their Significance for the UPSC CSE Examination on March 17, 2025

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Why has India got another tiger reserve?

For Preliminary Examination : Current events of national and international importance

For Mains Examination: GS III - Environment & Ecology

Context:

On March 9, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav announced that the Centre had declared the Madhav National Park in Madhya Pradesh as the country’s 58th tiger reserve. This is the ninth tiger reserve in the State, the highest among the States. Maharashtra has six; Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka have five each.

Source: The Hindu

Read about:

National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA)

Project tiger

Key takeaways:

Rationale for Establishing Tiger Reserves

Historically, tigers were widespread across India, but their population declined significantly due to hunting, poaching, and the colonial-era exploitation of forests for timber. In 1964, estimates suggested that around 40,000 tigers roamed India at the beginning of the 20th century. However, by the 1960s, rampant hunting, the increase in gun licenses post-independence, easier access to forests, large-scale deforestation, and the rise of commercial "Shikar Companies" and the fur trade had reduced their numbers to between 2,000 and 4,000.

Concerned about this decline, naturalists raised alarms, prompting the Indian Board for Wildlife (IBWL)—a predecessor to the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL)—to convene a meeting in New Delhi in July 1969. It recommended an outright ban on the export of wild cat skins, including tigers. That same year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), during its 10th Assembly in Delhi, included tigers in its Red Data Book, classifying them as an endangered species and advocating for a ban on tiger hunting.

With numbers dwindling to approximately 1,863, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi commissioned an 11-member Task Force to assess the situation and propose conservation strategies. In August 1972, the Task Force recommended protecting eight tiger habitats across India under what became ‘Project Tiger’. The initiative was officially launched on April 1, 1973, at Corbett Tiger Reserve, with an initial set of nine tiger reserves representing different tiger ecosystems: