Delhi school kids join signature campaign to save tigers

Hundreds of school kids jotted down their names in the Capital on Thursday, to draw public attention to the declining population of tigers in the country.

By Ravindra Sheoran

New Delhi, July 19 : Hundreds of school kids jotted down their names in the Capital on Thursday, to draw public attention to the declining population of tigers in the country.

The signature campaign which was organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) saw students from several schools signing their names and messages on a long piece of cloth, urging to 'save the tiger'.

The three-month long campaign would see people from all walks of life, from across the country, joining the signature campaign, which would be eventually handed over to the Central Government.

Ravi Singh, the Secretary General of WWF India chapter said that much more efforts are needed to save the tiger.The idea is three, one is to sensitise people to people, with regards to the plight of tigers, to push our government to support in saving tigers, in terms of resources, protection and third while all this has happened in the rest of the world, India needs to be aware that there is so much support for a cause like this internationally but within India we need to do much more than what we are doing now," said Singh.

"Tigers must be conserved because the future generation must see them as we have seen them. If the future generation does not see them it will be our fault," said Somesh Chaudhary, a girl student.

The frontline staff of Uttar Pradesh Dudhwa National Park who patrol the protected areas, were present on the occasion. They also spoke about the problems they face while protecting tigers.

"We have to go out in the forest in midnight on our old bicycles with just a dimly lit torch and a cane in the hand, to protect the tigers from poachers, who are highly equipped with modern arms and move on jeeps" said Mohammad Naseem Baksh, a forest guard.

Recently experts from the government-run Wildlife Institute of India (WII) had presented initial results of a new count of tigers in 16 of India's 28 tiger reserves and their surrounding areas.

The WII, which has been monitoring tiger populations across the country for the past two years, did not give a new estimated national total for tigers but said habitat destruction and human encroachment were leading to declining numbers.

There were about 40,000 tigers in India a century ago, but decades of poaching had cut their number to about 3,700, according to a count conducted in 2001 and 2002.

Conservationists said they believed the new census results suggested there was a decline of 65 percent in Madhya Pradesh, which has one of the largest tiger population in the country.

WII experts have said that effective tiger conservation would only become a reality if reserves were connected to one another so that tigers have a larger area to breed and hunt.

ANI