Can Indias tigers survive against the huge odds stacked against them?
over forty thousand tigers in India. True many were hunted by Westerners and Indian lords decades ago but India still had thousands left at the time of its independence in 1947. Still they continued to be shot down by anybody who owned a rifle and could buy a bait to attract the tiger. Villagers grazing their herds through forests ensured that the natural prey of tiger starved to death and thus so did tigers. As a result, by early 1970’s less than two thousand tigers remained in the jungles of India. Fortunately for the striped sufferer, the Indian prime minister at that time, Indira Gandhi, took action and founded Project Tiger, to save her country’s most valued asset from total extinction. For the next two decades there was a lull and tigers flourished under renewed protection in designated reserves. As a result their numbers reportedly increased to four thousand. But that was all to change in the nineties. Tiger poaching picked up. Organized gangs took advantage of the inherent lazi
