As many as 48 tigers have been found inhabiting the area outside the protected areas in forests of Chandrapur district in Maharashtra. This takes their number to 120 in the zone that is home to the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR).
The tiger estimation study in non-protected areas (PAs) of territorial forests and areas under Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM) was conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) over last four months.
As per the survey, the number of big cats in the district stands at 120, including 60 in core area and 12 in buffer area of TATR. “They include 20 breeding tigresses, indicative of the fact that these healthy habitats can sustain the tiger population. It has again proved that stability of tiger population in TATR is due to healthy presence of other tigers in its surrounding areas,” said WCT team member Aditya Joshi.
“It is the first-of-its-kind study in the country, carried out in a vast 2000 sq. kms. of territorial forest area outside the protected area (PA). It’s equally interesting to note that the tiger density in some blocks in these areas was found to be higher than that of some tiger reserves,” WCT president Anish Andhariya said yesterday.
He said the tiger density in Kanhalgaon-Central Chanda Block was found to be 2.34, which is more than that of Melghat Tiger Reserve in the state.
Similarly, the tiger density in Junona-Central Chanda block was found to be 1.77, which is higher than that of Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, Andhariya added.
Chief Conservator of Forests (Chandrapur Circle), Sanjay Thakre said the survey was sponsored by Chandrapur Forest department.
“We did not have the necessary expertise and equipment needed for the survey and hence we sought help from WCT for the purpose,” he said, adding that the new findings were quite encouraging.
Elaborating on the findings, Joshi said, “DNA identification through scat collection helped us to identify the movement of tigers in Greater Tadoba Landscape (non PA areas outside TATR). The 2000 sq km of forest area outside PA was divided into six blocks according to occupancy of tigers and other large carnivores.”
Joshi also added that they had used phase-IV camera trap (capture-recapture) technique to ascertain the exact number of tigers and leopards in these blocks.
“The entire area of 2000 sq. kms was covered by a network of 600 camera traps for full 25 days, as per the guidelines for Phase-IV tiger estimation,” he said.
