School students take part in a “Save Tiger” campaign at Nandankanan Zoological Park on the occasion of the International Tigers Day in Bhubaneswar on Friday.

According to experts, the number of wild tigers is at its lowest ever right now. A number of tiger species have already been extinct, proving the fact that the big cats are quite vulnerable to extinction. Climate change, habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict have been attributed to the decline in tiger population.

In fact, the world has lost almost 97 per cent of all wild tigers in the past 100 years. While in 1913, the number of tiger population stood around 1,00,000, enumerators found around 3,000 tigers in 2014. Among 14 countries that register tiger population, India has the highest number of tigers pegged at 1,706.

Recently, the Odisha government has counted 40 tigers in the state forests in an exercise that is being seen as a counter to the 2014 National Tiger Conservation Authority count that had pegged the figure at 28, which triggered a row.

Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee