Definition
A centrally sponsored conservation programme launched by India on 1 April 1973 to save the Bengal tiger and its habitat through a network of notified tiger reserves, now overseen by the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
Background and evolution
At the start of the twentieth century India probably had tens of thousands of tigers. Trophy hunting by royalty and colonial officials, bounties for killing "vermin", conversion of forests to farms, and the fur trade sent numbers crashing. A census in 1972 counted fewer than 2,000. That shock, along with the new Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, led Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government to launch Project Tiger the following year, with the conservationist Kailash Sankhala as its first director.
The original idea was to protect the tiger as an "umbrella species": a large predator at the top of the food chain needs large, healthy forests with plenty of deer, wild pigs and other prey, so saving it also saves whole ecosystems. The project started with nine reserves in different states. A crisis came in 2005, when tigers were found to have been wiped out by poachers in Sariska, Rajasthan. The Tiger Task Force that followed led to the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act 2006, which created the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and gave tiger reserves a firm legal basis.
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