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New Tiger Reserve Established in India

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A tigress and her cub in India's Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary.
A tigress and her cub in India's Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary. (Image credit: Vijay Kumar / WWF-India)

India has created a new protected area for tigers within a wildlife reserve in the south of the country.

The area, part of the Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary, is home to about 25 tigers, according to a release from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a conservation group. This population of tigers rivals the size of some of India's better-known reserves, the statement said.

For more than a decade, WWF-India has worked with local authorities in the state of Tamil Nadu (where the reserve is found) to support projects to counter poaching, improve communications via cellular phones and wireless networks, train forest rangers and monitor tigers, the statement said.

"The tiger is the national animal of India, and WWF congratulates the government for yet another important milestone in its conservation efforts that will make a tremendous contribution to the goal of conserving wild tigers and their natural habitats in the country," said Dipankar Ghose, of WWF-India, in the statement.

Tiger numbers have declined by about 95 percent in the last century across their entire historic range, and experts think there are only about 3,000 left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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Douglas Main
Douglas Main
Douglas Main loves the weird and wonderful world of science, digging into amazing Planet Earth discoveries and wacky animal findings (from marsupials mating themselves to death to zombie worms to tear-drinking butterflies) for Live Science. Follow Doug on Google+.