20+ Tigers Resurface In Indian Forest Where They'd Been Long Thought Extinct - ENN

[hatrack]

MUMBAI (Reuters) - At least 20 tigers have resurfaced in a tropical rainforest in western India, almost three decades after it was thought that poaching had wiped them out there, experts said on Tuesday.

The big cats were sighted over an 800 square kilometer (300 square miles) mountainous forest range in the western state of Maharashtra, bringing rare good news in a country that is rapidly losing its wildlife to poaching and habitat destruction. "There was good forest cover, an ideal habitat and an ideal prey base but tigers were not sighted in the Sahyadri range since the late 1970s," Vishwas Sawarkar, former head of the state-run Wildlife Institute of India, told Reuters.

"My estimate is there are at least 20 of them now," said Sawarkar, adding that the discovery was made during an ongoing nationwide tiger census.

India is believed to have half the world's surviving tigers, but according to a census in 2001 and 2002, their numbers have dwindled to 3,642 from 40,000 a century ago.

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/animals/article/22919

[BrklynLib at work]

1. At least that is some good news... but to have dwindled from 40,000...