Here is your paragraph on Project Tiger!
Project Tiger was launched in 1973, it is considered as one of the primer conservation effort in the country. Project Tiger aimed to conserve natural habitat of the tiger.
The survival of the tiger was looked at from the logic of it being at the apex of the food chain and hence it followed that the natural habitat was to be sustained.
A ‘core-buffer’ model was followed. The core areas were freed from all sorts of human activities and the buffer areas were subjected to ‘conservation oriented land use’.
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Each tiger reserve had management plans in accordance with the following principles:
i. Elimination of all forms of human exploitation and biotic disturbance from the core area and rationalization of activities in the buffer zone.
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ii. Restricting the habitat management only to repair the damages done to the eco-system by human and other interferences, so as to facilitate recovery of the eco-system to its natural state.
iii. Monitoring the faunal and floral changes over time and carrying out research about wildlife.
Project Tiger suffers from various problems – delayed and inadequate funds, poaching, grazing, encroachment and inadequacy of staff both in training and in numbers.
It is believed that the true increase in tiger numbers may have been considerably lower. Pug marks method (old method) had been too heavily relied on for census counts. While new methods used in 2008 census shows reduction in the number of tigers in some areas. Reports of widespread poaching of tigers in two of the premier Tiger Reserves of North India- Sariska and Ranthambore have been in news recently.
Despite all of this there is little doubt that there was a significant improvement in the situation of the tiger after the launch of Project Tiger. Recently a National Tiger Conservation Authority was established for better management of the project.