Kolkata, Nov 24 (IANS): The annual tiger census in Sunderbans will start from November 27, said officials here.

The training session for 50 staff selected for the purpose has already been completed at the Sajnekhali Range office on Thursday.

Sources from the state forest department said that besides the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve area, the census will also be conducted in the adjacent mangrove forest lands in the first phase.

In the second phase, the same will be conducted in other areas of Sunderbans in South 24 Parganas district that come under the jurisdiction of the state forest department.

A senior official from the state forest department said that under the forthcoming exercise starting from Monday as many as 1,464 camera traps will be installed at 732 locations.

“In the first phase, the process of installing camera traps will be completed on November 27 and they will be there at these locations for the next 35 days,” the state forest department official said.

The second phase of census, according to him, will start from February 14. In the last census 101 Royal Bengal Tigers were spotted in the Sunderbans area. The last tiger census too was conducted in two phases first from December 5, 2021 to January 5, 2022 and then from January 8 to February 10, 2022.

Before the two census exercises the number of tigers in the Sunderbans areas was 88 in 2018 and 76 in 2014.

A recent finding by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NCTA) and Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has revealed that the population density of tigers in Sunderbans area has almost reached an estimated carrying capacity of 4.68 tigers per 100 square km.