India, the world’s most populated country, has been successfully working to recover one of the largest, and most iconic, carnivores, the tiger, for decades. Protection, prey, peace, and prosperity have been key factors in the tiger recovery within this densely populated country, according to a new study. According to its authors, success in India offers a rare opportunity to explore the socio-ecological factors influencing tiger recovery more broadly. Earth’s large carnivores, crucial for maintaining ecosystem health, are among the most threatened species, impacted by habitat loss, prey depletion, human conflict, and illegal exploitation. These apex predators – vital for maintaining trophic cascades and ecosystem health – face diminishing populations, particularly in developing regions, where challenges like habitat fragmentation and high poverty compound conservation and recovery efforts. Tigers, once widespread across Asia, had been eliminated from over 90% of their historic range, leaving only about 3,600 wild individuals by the early 21st century. In response, tiger-range countries launched the Global Tiger Recovery Program in 2010 with the goal of doubling tiger populations by 2022. Despite hosting some of the densest human populations on Earth, India achieved this target and is now home to roughly 75% of the world’s wild tigers.

 

Drawing on 20 years of extensive national-scale tiger monitoring data, Yadvendradev Jhala and colleagues analyzed 381,000 square kilometers (km²) of tiger habitats using advanced occupancy models and high-resolution spatial datasets. The findings show that tigers have increased their range by nearly 3,000 km² annually over the past 2 decades, with a large portion of their current territory (45%) shared with ~60 million people in India. Protected areas, abundant with prey species, played a vital role in providing refuge, allowing tigers to repopulate surrounding multi-use landscapes. However, regions affected by high poverty, armed conflict, and habitat loss saw continued absence of tigers and localized extinctions, underscoring the importance of socioeconomic and political factors in ensuring successful recovery. “The success of tiger recovery in India offers important lessons for tiger-range countries as well as other regions for conserving large carnivores while benefitting biodiversity and communities simultaneously,” write Jhala et al. “It rekindles hope for a biodiverse Anthropocene.”

The American Heart Association’s Impact with Heart awards showcase two equitable health organizations funded by its venture capital and venture philanthropy programs.

A research team led by Dr Prof. Hitoshi Yamamoto of Rissho University and Dr Prof. Takahisa Suzuki of Tsuda University explored the conditions under which people would accept the moral judgments of AI. They focused on the behaviour of "not helping people with bad reputations (justified non-cooperation)," which is difficult for people to judge as good or bad, to investigate under what conditions people are more likely to accept AI's judgments over human judgments. The study revealed that people tend to be more accepting of AI's judgments when AI makes positive judgments and humans make negative judgments. The research results were published in the online academic journal Scientific Reports of the Nature Publishing Group on 27th January 2025.

Approaches to regulating artificial intelligence (AI), from creation to deployment and use in practice, vary internationally. Daryl Lim, Penn State Dickinson Law associate dean for research and innovation, H. Laddie Montague Jr. Chair in Law and Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) co-hire, has proposed an “equity by design” framework to better govern the technology and protect marginalized communities from potential harm in an article published on Jan. 27 in the Duke Technology Law Review.

About The Study: The overall prevalence of social isolation in this study was 3%, which is lower than other determinants of health, such as smoking, poverty, and inadequate health insurance. The results indicate 3 broad and likely interrelated populations at risk for social isolation, including racial and ethnic minority groups, those with financial insecurity (i.e., unemployed, uninsured, lower income), and those with chronic health conditions, with depression being a large factor.