Tiger population in India has increased 60 percent

NEW DELHI, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- The tiger population in India has increased to 2,226, a boost of about 60 percent from the 2008 estimate of 1,400.

In 2010, the last time there was a tiger count in the country, India's environment ministry estimated there to be about 1,706 tigers.

Officials used nearly 10,000 cameras for the estimation and 1,540 individual tigers were photographed.

Tiger populations in India declined rapidly because of poaching, smuggling and loss of habitat. There were an estimated 100,000 tigers in the country at the start of the 20th century.

India's Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said that although tiger populations are falling around the world, they are rising in India, where he said 70 percent of the world's tiger population lives.

"We must be proud of our legacy. We have increased by 30 percent from the last count," Javadekar said. "That is a huge success story."

Good news: India's tiger population up 30% http://t.co/BkFf6uPVDz

— Times of India (@timesofindia) January 20, 2015

An extensive effort to save tigers was started after in environmentalists could not see any tigers in an Indian wildlife reserve in 2004. India began arming some forest guards to fight off poachers.