NEW DELHI, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- India, faced with the alarming depletion of its tiger population, will extend its "Project Tiger" plan another five years with a $150 million allocation.
"The money would be used to rehabilitate people living in core area or critical tiger habitat and implement safeguard and retrofitting measures in the interest of wildlife conservation," Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced Wednesday in New Delhi, the Press Trust of India reported.
He said the plan will rehabilitate and resettle those tribes involved in traditional hunting. Eight new tiger reserves would be set up in the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Assam, Chidambaram said.
The project would also seek to strengthen the National Tiger Conservation Authority to curb unlawful activities within tiger reserves, and establish a monitoring lab in the Wildlife Institute of India.
Various surveys have shown that India, once home to half of the world's tiger population, has lost most of the magnificent animals due largely to illegal poaching or urban encroachment of tiger habitat.
The last major survey done in 2002 put the population at about 3,500, compared to more than 10 times that number a century ago.
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