NEW DELHI, MAY 16:Last January, when the Ministry of Environment and Forests began its Rs 13-crore tiger census—with the Supreme Court watching—it said that by this July, it would have the first “scientific” count. This evening, it issued a three-para press release: it will take at least one more year.

What the Ministry didn’t mention is that its entire tiger-counting process has been questioned by an international team of experts officially invited by the Government.

Under fire since The Sunday Express broke the missing tiger stories last year, the ministry top brass have been ducking the critical question of how many tigers have died. They are nowhere near the answer. (The last census counted 3,600 tigers, it is feared that the number now will be below 1500.)

Glaring holes in the method of counting, too much dependence on “integrity” of the surveyors, high possibility of tainted numbers—these are among the startling conclusions of a team led by John Seidensticker, one of the world’s most revered tiger experts who works with the department of conservation biology at Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park in Washington, DC.

After surveying the census operations in seven tiger reserves, including Corbett (Uttaranchal) and Valmiki (Bihar)—Valmiki is considered to be one of the worst-hit reserves—Seidensticker and his team have already filed their report. A copy of it has already reached the World Conservation Union which monitors conservation protocols across the world.

The key points made in the report, a copy of which is with The Indian Express:

• The Ministry dispensed with the “pugmark” counting method claiming it was prone to human error. And introduced what it called a “peer-reviewed, scientific” method under which counting involves several stages, use of cameras, testing of DNA samples and mapping tiger density using GIS (geographic information systems). Seidensticker’s report says that this method, too, relies on the “integrity of the primary data collectors, data compilers and their supervisors.”

• The genetic methods proposed in the census, the report says, “have not been fully developed for this application”.

• There are not enough GPS (global positioning system) sets to map out the terrain as per the methodology.

• The census’s feasibility is in doubt given that more than 40,000 forest units will have to be sampled, 20% of this area in the North-East. “Implementation is an enormous undertaking...there is also no detailed write-up of the technical analysis, explicitly identifying the analytical techniques to be used in each phase of the framework.’’

• The census has no provision for tracking the number of poaching incidents and other “human-caused” mortality.

• Evidence of how unwieldy the new process has become comes from Project Tiger director Rajesh Gopal’s communication to Seidensticker, quoted in his report. Gopal assured the team that the final “population estimation of tigers (would be ready by) July 2006.” This is contradicted by today’s announcement.

The counting delay is dangerous, say experts. Says former Project Tiger director P K Sen: “By the time we have some results, how many tigers will we be left with? Protection takes a beating if so much time is spent on counting.”

• One key reason is death by poaching. This is echoed by Seidensticker in his report: “A substantive deficiency noted in the (counting) framework...is the absence of tiger mortality monitoring.”

• The Ministry claims that data from states is being processed at the Wildlife Institute of India. Says institute director P R Sinha: “Most of the states are sitting on (the data). The DG (forest) is pushing them hard to comply over the next two weeks.”

• There is a bizarre official explanation for why the data collected in January-February hasn’t been computed yet. “State official have technical problem with the software (read modified excel sheets) we sent,” says Gopal. This after there was elaborate training before the census began.