Counting tigers on YouTube
Conservationists, park rangers and anyone interested in tigers can now have Internet access to a practical guide to estimating the numbers of wild tigers and their prey. This information, necessary for tiger conservation, is in video format thanks to film-maker Shekar Dattatri and the India Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Dattatri, who produces wildlife films to influence the public and policy-makers on environmental issues in his native India, was commissioned by the WCS in 2007 to make a training video based on a technical manual, Monitoring Tigers and their Prey.
The 45-minute video can be viewed on video-sharing website YouTube.
Dr Ravi Chellam, country director (India) for the WCS, says the film explains the principles on which the latest monitoring practices are based. “The video will also be useful to people studying other big cats like jaguars, cheetahs, snow leopards and leopards because the methods of monitoring are essentially the same.”
“The world’s wild tiger population has dipped down to historically low numbers, which makes estimating their numbers through rigorous science extremely necessary,” Dattatri says. “Without such monitoring, we would not know if conservation efforts are succeeding or failing. When used together, the manual and the video will provide users with the correct techniques.”
The video can be viewed at youtube.com/monitoringtigers and is also available as a DVD, along with the book on which it is based.
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