With an aim to strengthen the tiger conservation campaign the second global tiger conference is scheduled to be held in Dhaka on March 4-6 which is a follow-up of the first conference held in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 2010. The Department of Forest in Bangladesh along with Global Tiger Initiative, the Global Tiger Forum is jointly organising the Second Global Tiger Recovery Programme stocktaking conference among the tiger range countries. The conference will mainly focus on tiger conservation activities taken by the different tiger range countries and asses the advancement of the initiatives taken up in 2010.
The global leaders of the tiger range countries had taken decision to double the number of tigers in the world by 2022 on the basis of the tiger population in 2010 when the number was approximately 3200. The tiger range countries where tigers still roam freely are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam and North Korea. As per the joint census of Bangladesh and India in 2004 around 440 Bengal tigers were found in the Bangladeshi part of the Sundarbans.
Meanwhile, euphoric over the phenomenal growth of tiger population, disclosed by last year´s count, Nepal´s conservation authorities are now preparing to match the number of big cats with that of India. In July last year, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC), after a grueling exercise of tracing tigers in five protected areas and three wildlife corridors of the country, officially put the tiger population at 198. At the same time, India also counted tigers in its all protected areas, which are geographically connected with Nepal’s tiger habitat. This is the first time that Nepal and India are matching their respective tiger populations.