India today has 70 percent of world's tigers: Javadekar

Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday announced that thanks to the scientific approach taken by tiger conservation agencies to increase the population, India now has 70 percent of the world's population of the big cats.

"Our latest estimate is that today India has 70 percent of the world's tiger population and we now have 2,226 tigers presently in 47 tiger reserves and this is a great achievement. It is a net increase of 30 percent over the last estimation," Javadekar told the media.

"This is the result of combined efforts of passionate officers, forest guards and community participation and our scientific approach. That's why we want to create more tiger reserves. This is proof of India's biodiversity and how we care for mitigating climate change. Those who want real action on climate change: this is India's exhibition, which the world will applaud," he added.

The minister also assured that they are working on ensuring that cases of man-animal conflict can be reduced to a minimal.

"Man-animal conflict is not as prominently increasing as far as tigers are concerned. Yes, every death is very unfortunate and is irreparable. So we must ensure that such conflicts don't happen. But to that end, we have proactively decided that we will create more grasslands and water storage in forest areas so that the animals will live happily in the forest and no one will intrude on anybody's territory," he said.