The Pilibhit Tiger Reserve and the Uttar Pradesh Forest department
have bagged the first-ever international award, TX2, for doubling the number of
tigers in four years against a target of 10 years.
The Pilibhit
Tiger Reserve (PTR) and the Uttar Pradesh Forest department have bagged the
first-ever international award, TX2, for doubling the number of tigers in four
years against a target of 10 years.
PTR was the first
to receive the award among 13 tiger range countries.
It achieved this
goal in just four years from 2014, when it had 25 tigers which went up to 65 in
2018.
The award was
virtually presented to the principal chief conservator of forest (wildlife) of
the state, Sunil Pandey, by UNDP's (United Nations Development Program) head of
ecosystems and biodiversity, Mindori Paxton.
Pandey said the
global target of doubling the tiger
population was set in 2010 by the partners in TX2 award -- UNDP, Global
Tiger Forum, International Union for Conservation of Nature, World Wide Fund
for Nature, Conservation Assured/Tiger Standards and the Lion's Share.
Naveen Khandelwal,
deputy director of PTR, had applied for this award in September this year after
the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) released this year's the
state-wise figures of the tiger estimation which was based on the census
conducted in 2018 in all tiger reserves across the country.
Khandelwal said no
other tiger reserve among all the 13 tiger range countries could succeed in
doubling the big cat population in a span of 10 years.
He said as per the
NTCA's tiger estimation report, the PTR had 57 resident and eight transit
tigers in 2018. This figure did not include the tiger cubs below the age of one
year. The growth of 40 tigers in a short span of four years was recognized for
the TX2 award.
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