It is not easy to count the elusive tiger. This time, however, it has been a massive tallying exercise that involved elaborate methods like camera-trapping (photographing the animal using automated cameras), instead of the traditional pugmark and waterhole techniques. But toting up numbers, howsoever essential and encouraging, is by itself not enough. It should become a pointer to better policy formulation and bigger push for more allocation and better absorption of resources for the conservation of the big cat — armed guards, stricter implementation of anti-poaching laws, transparent monitoring of conservation efforts, improved, inviolate habitat for the animal by relocating people in core areas in protected areas and increased awareness about wildlife conservation. There should also be an equally concerted effort to look at tiger population in non-protected areas, which the census leaves out. Enthusiasm should not, also, lead to foolhardiness as we saw in the way tigers were relocated in Sariska.

For, when it comes to the tiger, evasive as it is, counting is by far easier than conserving.