Annual Wild Indian Tiger Deaths See Little Change in 2020

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) of India released its official report on wild tiger deaths for 2020.. Their figure came in at 106, which is three deaths lower than the figure recently published by the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) who reported 109. The discrepancy is evidence of the difficulty associated with recording wild tiger deaths in the right time period. The state of the tiger’s remains can sometimes cast doubt as to whether the death occurred within the past year or not.

Despite the variation, the numbers this year are much closer than in 2019 when the NTCA reported 96 deaths while WPSI estimated 113. This wide gap also makes it unclear whether there was a slight increase or decrease in total deaths, but either way the number remained relatively constant.

As for the cause of death, WPSI estimates 30 of these deaths were the result of poaching, down from 38 in 2019. The leading cause of tiger mortality was fights with other tigers (38), followed by poaching (30), natural causes (28), failed medical treatment (6), fights with other animals (4), and car accidents (3).

Full story by Shivani Azad at Times of India