MONDAY, 09 APRIL 2012 00:52
From no tiger in 2009, Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh is now roaring with a dozen cubs and five adult tigers. The success of the big cat reintroduction experiment in the reserve for the past three years by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Forest department has caught international attention with Cambodia and Russia willing to take a leaf from Panna’s conservation book.
In sharp contrast Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, which too began on the same lines as Panna in 2008 with five big cats, has not been able to pace up the conservation ladder as Panna. WII is to take up a comparative study on stress hormone factor of the tigers in the two reserves to investigate the reasons behind Sariska’s failure.
“Panna’s big cat recovery programme has been referred to as the best practices of reintroduction that effectively combines both the technical and managerial strategies simultaneously,” said WII scientist Dr K Ramesh. He is heading the technical team as the Principal Investigator in the Reintroduction and Monitoring programme in Panna.
He confirmed that reintroduction of tiger population was in the pipeline in both Cambodia and Russia on the lines of the much appreciated strategies adopted in Panna. This is expected to be carried out under the Eastern Plain Landscape Programme of the World Wildlife Fund. Ramesh was in Cambodia recently to share his experiences and expertise on the subject.
Field Director Panna R Srinivasa Murthy, one of the key architects of Panna’s success story, felt that intensive monitoring and security were responsible for the positive results. “Our field staff submitted regular reports on the tigers at 8 am everyday — this way we could anticipate the mating behaviour of the big cats,” he said. Tiger monitoring in Panna is done with eight captive elephants.
The managerial interventions have been compounded with the technical strategies leading to Panna’s success. “We have been following an incremental approach in the reintroduction initiatives by gradually introducing the tigers instead of hurrying through their reintroduction,” pointed out K Ramesh.
First, two tigresses T1 and T2 were introduced from Bandhavgarh and Kanha respectively in March 2009. After allowing them to acclimatise for sometime T3 male was brought from Pench Tiger Reserve. Within a year in 2010 both the tigresses delivered their cubs.
However, what really turned heads was opening up of a path breaking chapter in conservation when two orphaned female cubs — T4 and T5 were introduced in March and November 2011 respectively. They were from the litters of a collared tigress that had got killed in a fight with another in Kanha in May 2005. Both of them had been hand-reared after being rescued at the age of three weeks from Kanha.
But proving all apprehensions and aspersions wrong T4 delivered its first litter in November- December 2011. Now the other “rewilded” tigress T5 has also been seen with the only male tiger of the reserve-T3 and there soon may be chances of more cubs booming.
Panna may be enjoying its first flush of success, but Ramesh cautioned that the need of the hour was to look beyond the Panna boundaries. Nearly six out of the 12 cubs are about two-year-old and have started dispersing to the adjoining buffer and the territorial forest divisions.
“Hence, the areas need to be brought under the ambit of tiger conservation, which is certainly challenging considering the large number of local villages in the vicinity,” he pointed out. For this the local communities had to be involved in the process, he stressed.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/home/online-channel/360-todays-newspaper/56336-panna-sets-new-benchmark-in-tiger-conservation.html
From no tiger in 2009, Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh is now roaring with a dozen cubs and five adult tigers. The success of the big cat reintroduction experiment in the reserve for the past three years by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Forest department has caught international attention with Cambodia and Russia willing to take a leaf from Panna’s conservation book.
In sharp contrast Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, which too began on the same lines as Panna in 2008 with five big cats, has not been able to pace up the conservation ladder as Panna. WII is to take up a comparative study on stress hormone factor of the tigers in the two reserves to investigate the reasons behind Sariska’s failure.
“Panna’s big cat recovery programme has been referred to as the best practices of reintroduction that effectively combines both the technical and managerial strategies simultaneously,” said WII scientist Dr K Ramesh. He is heading the technical team as the Principal Investigator in the Reintroduction and Monitoring programme in Panna.
He confirmed that reintroduction of tiger population was in the pipeline in both Cambodia and Russia on the lines of the much appreciated strategies adopted in Panna. This is expected to be carried out under the Eastern Plain Landscape Programme of the World Wildlife Fund. Ramesh was in Cambodia recently to share his experiences and expertise on the subject.
Field Director Panna R Srinivasa Murthy, one of the key architects of Panna’s success story, felt that intensive monitoring and security were responsible for the positive results. “Our field staff submitted regular reports on the tigers at 8 am everyday — this way we could anticipate the mating behaviour of the big cats,” he said. Tiger monitoring in Panna is done with eight captive elephants.
The managerial interventions have been compounded with the technical strategies leading to Panna’s success. “We have been following an incremental approach in the reintroduction initiatives by gradually introducing the tigers instead of hurrying through their reintroduction,” pointed out K Ramesh.
First, two tigresses T1 and T2 were introduced from Bandhavgarh and Kanha respectively in March 2009. After allowing them to acclimatise for sometime T3 male was brought from Pench Tiger Reserve. Within a year in 2010 both the tigresses delivered their cubs.
However, what really turned heads was opening up of a path breaking chapter in conservation when two orphaned female cubs — T4 and T5 were introduced in March and November 2011 respectively. They were from the litters of a collared tigress that had got killed in a fight with another in Kanha in May 2005. Both of them had been hand-reared after being rescued at the age of three weeks from Kanha.
But proving all apprehensions and aspersions wrong T4 delivered its first litter in November- December 2011. Now the other “rewilded” tigress T5 has also been seen with the only male tiger of the reserve-T3 and there soon may be chances of more cubs booming.
Panna may be enjoying its first flush of success, but Ramesh cautioned that the need of the hour was to look beyond the Panna boundaries. Nearly six out of the 12 cubs are about two-year-old and have started dispersing to the adjoining buffer and the territorial forest divisions.
“Hence, the areas need to be brought under the ambit of tiger conservation, which is certainly challenging considering the large number of local villages in the vicinity,” he pointed out. For this the local communities had to be involved in the process, he stressed.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/home/online-channel/360-todays-newspaper/56336-panna-sets-new-benchmark-in-tiger-conservation.html
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