India’s Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR) in Erode, Tamil Nadu, and Nepal’s Bardiya National Park has jointly won the TX2 award 2022 for doubling their tiger populations since 2010.
- The awards are presented by the Conservation Assured|Tiger Standards (CA|TS), Fauna and Flora International (FFI), Global Tiger Forum (GTF), IUCN’s (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Programme (ITHCP), Panthera, UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), The Lion’s Share, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) Tigers Alive Initiative.
Background:
i.TX2 Goal: The TX2 goal is a global commitment to double the world’s wild tigers by 2022. In 2010, 13 tiger range governments came together for the first time at the St Petersburg Summit and committed to double the number of wild tigers by 2022 (the next Chinese Year of the Tiger).
ii.CA|TS, FFI, GTF, IUCN’s ITHCP, Panthera, UNDP, The Lion’s Share, WCS, and WWF have launched two awards such as TX2 Award and Tiger Conservation Excellence Award to recognise and celebrate sites that have either made significant progress towards tiger recovery since 2010.
iii.In September tiger range countries will convene at the second Global Tiger Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, to assess progress towards the ambitious TX2 goal.
Key Points about TX2 Awards:
a.TX2 Award 2022:
i.STR: The award was given for STR after its tiger numbers doubled to 80 from 25 tigers in 2011.
- Sathyamangalam wildlife sanctuary was declared a tiger reserve in 2013 and the reserve that spread across 1,411.60 sq km is an important link between the Nilgiris and the Eastern Ghats landscape.
- The Nilgiri biosphere landscape is currently the home to the largest tiger population in the world.
ii.The Bardiya National Park:
- It is the largest national park in the lowland Terai that covers an area of 968 sq km and is home to the endangered Royal Bengal tiger.
- The park has increased the tiger population by almost five-fold from less than 20 tigers in 2009 to 87 in 2018 (as per the tiger census).
Note – The awards celebrate the upcoming launch of the 2022 Lunar Year of the Tiger.
b.Tiger Conservation Excellence Award 2022:
The award for Tiger Conservation Excellence was presented to Khata Forest Conservation Area in Nepal a network of 74 community forests covering 202 sq km, which secures transboundary connectivity for tigers between Bardiya National Park in Nepal and Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in India.
Additional Info – In 2019, STR bagged the national award for showing the highest increment in the Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) for registering the growth of over 30 percent in the tiger population.
