Thats a big roar!

The Guinness Book of World Records has all sort of records, some really weird, some totally silly and some truly awe-inspiring. One such record of sorts was made by the survey on tigers conducted in India in 2018-19. This survey, Status of Tigers in India 2018-19 has been recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. 

Conducted every four years, this is the largest camera trap wildlife survey conducted on earth. This is measured in terms of resources deployed, area covered and data gathered. It was conducted on behalf of the Government of India by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and Wildlife Institute of India. 

The survey concluded that India’s tiger population had increased by a third from 2,226 in the last survey done in 2014 to 2,927 (including tiger cubs) in 2018.

Here’s some mind boggling numbers:

Camera traps in 26,838 locations in 141 different sites in 20 states

Covered 121,337sq km - double the size of Sri Lanka.

Camera took 35 million photographs - 76,651 were of tigers and 51,777 were of leopards.

Stripe recognition software employed to identify 2,461 different tigers, not including tiger cubs, in 88,985sq km of forest land in the country.

Total tigers in survey– 1492 found in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttarakhand.

Foot surveys - covered 381,200sq km of land, an area bigger than the landmass of Japan.

Survey done is three phases - 593,882 man-days in total.