Population of lions, tigers rising in India: Javadekar

The number of Asiatic lions and tigers along with other major wild animals have witnessed a steady increase in their population, parliament was told on Thursday.

"The number of Asiatic lions have increased from 304 in 1995 to 523 in 2015, tigers have increased from 1,411 in 2006 to 2,226 in 2014 and elephants from 25,569 in 1993 to 29,391-30,711 in 2012," Environment, Forests and Climate Change Minister Prakash Javadekar told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

He said that data pertaining to loss of human lives and damage to crops by wild animals is not collected by his ministry but a total of 72 people were mauled by tigers between 2012 and 2015 while another 769 were attacked and killed by elephants during the same period.

"Degradation of the habitat including depletion of water and food availability is considered some of the reasons for wild animals to come out of their natural habitat," Javadekar said.