WHEN IS INTERNATIONAL TIGER DAY

World Tiger Day is celebrated on July 29 every year to raise awareness about a gradual decline in tiger population leaving them on the brink of extinction, and to encourage tiger conservation. International Tiger Day was established in 2010 at Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia. At the summit, governments of tiger-populated countries vowed to double tiger population by 2020.

 

Around 3,900 tigers remain in the wild across the globe, according to World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Since the beginning of the 20th century, over 95 per cent of the world's tiger population has been lost. A WWF report says that about a 100 years ago, there might have been over 100,000 tigers roaming the planet.

 

There are different species of tigers — Siberian tigers, Bengal tigers, Indochinese tigers, Malayan tigers and South China tigers. The Bengal tiger is found primarily in India, with smaller a population of them in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar as well. It is the most numerous of all tiger subspecies, with more than 2,500 left in the wild. The creation of India’s tiger reserves in the 1970s helped stabilise tigers’ numbers. After a survey across 18 states, the Indian government in 2019 estimated the count of tigers in the country at 2,967. The Tiger Estimation Report 2018, released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 29, 2019, said that the population of tigers in India had increased to 2,967 in 2018 from 2,226 in 2014, according to the tiger census.