India has been home to many unique and quirky records in the past. As many as 80 such records have made it to the list of Guinness World Records 2020. From Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s iron statue in Gujarat to the iron-fist of Kerala’s Abheesh P Dominic who smashed 122 coconuts in a minute and umpteen others. But somehow India’s 2018 tiger census making a world record and entering the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest ever camera-trap wildlife survey, is a truly proud moment.
According to the website of the Guinness Book of World Records, the fourth edition of the census, which was carried out between 2018-19, was “the most comprehensive to date, in terms of both resource and data amassed”.
India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar reacted to the accomplishment and said that the aim to double the numbers was achieved four years before target.
The results of 2018 had shown that India now has an estimated 2,967 tigers out of which 2,461 individual tigers have been photo captured on camera traps, a whopping 83 per cent of the tiger population, highlighting the comprehensive nature of the survey. It only goes to show that the work of hundreds of conservationists on and off the field, early initiatives such as Project Tiger (1973), global NGOs such as WWF, and many others is now bearing fruit.
