Research suggesting that India's Tiger population grown by a massive 30% in 4 years ending 2014, have been called into question by scientists at the University of Oxford as well as the Indian Statistical Institute and the Wildlife Conservation Society. They have claimed that the statistics were based on a flawed methodology. The methodology used is one which has previously been tested by scientists around the world but has now been deemed "unreliable".
Arjun Gopalaswamy, of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University's Department of Zoology and one of the scientists who tested the methodology, reportedly said: "Our study shows that index-calibration models are so fragile that even a 10% uncertainty in detection rates severely compromises what we can reliably infer from them.
"Our empirical test with data from Indian tiger survey efforts proved that such calibrations yield irreproducible and inaccurate results".
Dr Ullas Karanth, a member of India's National Tiger Conservation Authority, reportedly said: "This research exposes fundamental statistical weaknesses in the sampling, calibration and extrapolations that are at the core of methodology used by the government to estimate India's numbers, thus undermining their reliability. We are not at all disputing that tigers numbers have increased in many locations in India in last eight years, but the method employed to measure this increase is not sufficiently robust or accurate to measure changes at regional and country wide levels".
