Equipped with 1,464 all-weather night-vision cameras strategically positioned in 732 locations known as grids, the West Bengal forest department is conducting its annual census to estimate the tiger population in the Sunderbans, the world’s only mangrove tiger habitat. The camera trap exercise is expected to conclude by the first week of January next year. In the last national count released on July 29, 2022, by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, 101 tigers were identified in the Indian Sunderbans. This quadrennial census conducted by the central government is complemented by annual exercises carried out by state forest departments. The Sunderbans, spanning 10,000 sqkm, with over 4,000 sqkm in India and the rest in Bangladesh, is monitored by the Sunderban Tiger Reserve and the South 24 Parganas forest division. While the state-level census findings were not released in 2021-22 due to the national census, the 2020-21 census reported 96 tigers in the Sunderbans. The last national count identified 81 tigers in the Sunderban Tiger Reserve and the remaining in the South 24-Parganas division. Each 2 sqkm grid is equipped with a pair of cameras facing opposite directions to estimate the tiger population based on annual state-level findings from trap cameras.
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