A curious case of missing tigers in India’s Ranthambore National Park has raised concerns about how authorities monitor and update fluctuating tiger numbers, and how they define “missing,” contributor Deshdeep Saxena reports for Mongabay India. In early November, Pavan Kumar Upadhyay, the principal chief conservator of forests and chief wildlife warden of the state of Rajasthan, where Ranthambore National Park is located, released an order announcing that 25 tigers were missing from the park’s tiger monitoring report. “The field director of the park has not been able to give any satisfactory reply on the issue,” the order said. “There was no solid evidence of 11 tigers for over a year, while 14 tigers had not been found for less than a year.” Hinting at a lack of coordination, two days later, the field director submitted a contradictory report saying that 10 of the 25 missing tigers were recently spotted by camera trap, information that was supposedly already relayed to Upadhyay’s office. As for the remaining 15 missing tigers, park officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told Mongabay India that 11 of those tigers have been missing for five years and are unlikely to return, while only four tigers can truly be called missing. Upadhyay told Mongabay India that after accounting for the reconfirmed tigers and nine others that are very old and may have disappeared, there were still six tigers remaining to be traced. A three-member committee has been tasked to look into the issue further. Tiger Watch, an…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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