A mobile phone service provider has launched a campaign to save the Indian Tiger from extinction. They say there are 1,411 tigers in the wild in India. Do we have that many?

God knows!

In any case, this is the figure doled out by National Tiger Conservation Authority in 2008. At least a hundred tiger deaths have been recorded in 2009. About 28 tiger deaths have been reported so far this year. So, how does it add up?

We had 1,827 tigers in 1972 which grew to 4,334 in 1989 and dropped to 3,750 in 1993. The last tiger census in 2001 claimed that there were 3,642 tigers in the wild. And, now, we have 1,411 tigers.

In 1992, the Chairman of the Cats Specialist Group of International Union for Conservation of Nature, Peter Jackson, shocked the world by announcing that he gave ten years for the tiger to become extinct. Going by that the tiger population should have been decimated by the year 2002. We are in the year 2010. And, we still claim to have 1,411 tigers. That is not bad at all.

Today, the tiger range countries include India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Siberia.

The Indian Tiger is the most common of all and accounts for nearly two-third of all tiger subspecies alive today. The total population of the Royal Bengal Tiger, the Indochinese Tiger, the Malayan Tiger, the Sumatran Tiger, the Siberian Tiger, the South China Tiger is believed to be around 3,000. India is home to almost half of the world’s tiger population and over two-third of the 2,000 Royal Bengal Tigers in the wild today.

So, the most serious tiger conservation projects and efforts must originate in India if we must see this species through in the coming decades. Since poaching is the main cause of decimation of tiger population, we may be able to maintain our tiger population if effective measures are taken to prevent poaching.

Coming back to the advertisement campaign, the advertisement company has minted money for producing the advertisement. The mobile phone service provider is receiving publicity for its product. The celebrities are getting paid for endorsing this campaign. And, the television channels will get paid for carrying these advertisements.

At the end of the day, will somebody tell me as to how tiger conservation is getting benefitted from this advertisement campaign?