Why in news? Tigers population in Karnataka has registered a significant growth, with the latest report by the Forest Department for the year 2020 estimating an increase of about 30 per cent in the number of big cats.

Highlights:

• Karnataka has five tiger reserves: Bandipur, Nagarahole, Biligiri Ranganatha Swami (BRT), Bhadra and Dandeli
• The monitoring survey looks at the tiger habitats in Karnataka as two landscapes, with ranges of the big cats crisscrossing state borders and across reserves.
• Exercise aimed at periodical assessment of the ground situation in the reserves and suggest interventions needed to fix any gaps in the management instead of waiting for four years to take action.
• The southern landscape spread over Nagarahole-Bandipur-Wayanad-Mudumalai-Sathyamangalam-BRT was estimated to have 724 tigers while the population in the Mookambika-Anshi-Mhadei-Kudremukh-Bhadra landscape was estimated at 150.
• National Tiger Conservation Authority survey-2018, Karnataka had about 524 tigers, of which about 350 were counted inside the five reserves and the remaining ones spread across the protected areas of the state.
• The latest report puts the number of tigers in the reserves at 403, with more tigers dispersing into the protected areas
• One of the trends noticed by the report was the increase in the density of tiger population in Bandipur, BRT and Kali reserves.
• Bandipur has seen an increase (10 per cent) in the density of tigers. The trend is evident from the increasing incidents of tiger conflict in the last three years,