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Camera Trap Photographs Capture India's Wild Tigers

The images are helping conservationists estimate population sizes of the secretive cats

Over the past 25 years the Malenad camera traps have captured 8,843 images of 888 individual tigers.

Courtesy of K. Ullas Karanth

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How many tigers remain in the wild? In the July Scientific American, conservation biologist K. Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society describes his decades-long quest to track the elusive felines. Conventional tiger census methods are flawed and produce misleading numbers, he argues. Getting accurate counts of wild tigers in key populations is essential for developing effective strategies to conserve them. Over the years Karanth has used camera traps to monitor important tiger populations in India. Check out the slide show above for images from the camera traps.

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