International Tiger Day: Signatories to announce progress on declaration to double population of big cat by 2022, take quiz to know more

International Tiger Day is observed on 29 July as a reminder of the agreement to raise awareness about the decline of the global tiger population, which was signed by countries at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia in 2010. The signatories declared an agreement that governments of tiger-populated countries would double the animal’s population by 2022. In India, there is an ongoing campaign to increase awareness about tiger conservation, however, because of dwindling habitats due to encroachment, the man-animal conflict in tiger-rich areas has “never been worse”.A report by Down To Earth said, “Such incidents unfortunately are neither new nor surprising across the tiger range states of India. And there is a sense of inevitability about the situation. It is important to remember that the distinction between the wild and the civilised is an artifice. The wild is the true natural, and the wild does not recognise human-made boundaries — of protected zones, states or nations.” World Tiger Day is of significance because according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are only around 3,900 wild tigers in the world currently. According to reports, around 95 percent of the global tiger population has been lost to various activities like poaching, etc, since the beginning of the 20th century.