A new Guinness World Record set by India’s 2018 Tiger Census.
India’s 2018 tiger census set a Guinness World Record after it had the largest camera trap wildlife survey to date.
India has entered the Guinness Book of World Record for all the right reasons, as its 2018 tiger census set a new record for being the largest camera trap wildlife survey to date. The Guinness World Record team revealed that the fourth edition of the tiger census, in 2018-19, in terms of both resource and data amassed was the most comprehensive to date. A camera trap is an outdoor photographic device fitted with motion sensors that start recording only when an animal passes by.
Guinness team explaining the details of the camera trap:
The Guinness team that announced India’s feat explained details of the camera trap and said,” Camera traps were placed in 26,838 locations across 141 different sites and surveyed an effective area of 121,337 square km (46,848 sq miles). In total, the camera traps captured 34,858,623 photographs of wildlife (of which 76,651 were of tigers, 51,777 were leopards, and the rest were of native fauna). From these photographs, 2461 individual tigers (excluding cubs) were identified using stripe-pattern-recognition software.”
Extensive assessment was conducted:
The 2018 “Status of Tigers in India” assessment also conducted extensive foot surveys that covered 522,998 km (324,975 miles) of trails apart from the unprecedented camera trap usage. The survey also sampled 317,958 habitat plots for vegetation and prey dung. The whole survey was carried out in around 620,795 labour days and 381,000 km square (147,181 sq mile) was the estimated total area of forest studied.
The Tiger population in India has grown by one-third:
The extensive record-breaking survey also revealed that India’s tiger population had increased by approx. one-third. The population grew to 2927 in 2019 from 2014’s 2226, which indicates a positive outcome for the wildlife.
