A proposed new tracking system will help to provide better surveillance of India’s tiger population, in a bid to halt the drastically dropping numbers of the big cats in the country.

India’s government set up a national wildlife crime prevention department in 2008, bringing in former military soldiers to guard tigers in state-operated sanctuaries. But numbers continue to plummet at an alarming rate.

The country’s tiger population, which was estimated to 3,700 in 2002, is now believed to be lying at no greater than 1.400. Even though prevention and protection have been made priorities, monitoring of the big cats remains a problem, and with only estimates of population levels to work with, the situation could be even more alarming for the animals than it is at the moment.

India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told the news agency, “lazy” wildlife field officers are largely to blame, “They make up data instead of surveying the field,” he said.

The M-STrIPES system, which was developed by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Zoological Society of London, will utilize radio collars and a GPRS tracking system.

Ramesh believes that this new system will give a much more accurate picture of the situation they are facing “There are 39 Tiger Reserves in the country today. This system will ensure that the surveillance activities that are done by field director and his colleagues are based on ground level information”.

He added that it should provide a boost to efforts attempting to prevent poaching and misconduct. There is no doubt that these measures cannot come to soon, with an AFP report detailing the crisis the tiger faces in India.

Even with the setting up of the wildlife crime protection unit, 35 tigers have been illegally killed since the beginning of 2009. The report states how even though the hunting of tigers and the trading of their parts are prohibited in India and 166 other countries, many Asian nations covet tiger pelts, claws, and bones to create medicine.

Better monitoring is a key step to halting illegal activity, as without adequate tracking resources authorities can only work in a vaguely targeted fashion. But if they are able to accurately track the tiger population they can see exactly where the battle is being lost and so step up the fight where it is required.