JAIPUR, India – In an unprecedented attempt to revive the tiger population in western India, authorities airlifted a female tiger to a national reserve Friday where it will join a male tiger delivered there last week.
The tigers were carried by Indian Air Force helicopters to Sariska Tiger Reserve in the western state of Rajasthan, whose entire tiger population has been wiped out by poachers in the last five years.
Poaching and a vanishing habitat have savaged Indian tigers, which were believed to number in the tens of thousands a century ago. The tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,400, according to the latest tiger census in February.
Environmentalists hailed the airlifting of the tigers from Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, one of India’s most popular places for tourists to see tigers, to Sariska. (more…)
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