Anamalai Tiger Reserve begins its wildlife census

Wildlife census has taken off in Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) and, pug marks of tigers were spotted in four places indicating a healthy trend. These were in Aliyar, Pothamadai and Villoni areas in Pollachi forest range. This is believed to be strange because it is seldom that even two pugmarks are spotted in a census exercise.
Of course, forest officials have not revealed the exact location where the pugmarks. That was to ensure safety from poachers. Forest officials have taken images of the pugmarks so that they could be analyzed to ascertain the age of the tigers.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 6 January 2016.

The exercise is a six-day one and has been undertaken with more than 100 staff from the forest department and 70 volunteers including environmentalists, college students and members of NGOs. Their task is to enumerate wildlife population in the 958sq km area of ATR consisting of Pollachi, Valparai, Manampalli, Ulanthi, Amaravathi and Udumalpet forest ranges.
The forest department conducts a pre-monsoon as well as a post-monsoon census every year.
A total of 96 teams have been formed - in each team, there is a guard, three anti-poaching watchers and a volunteer to conduct the census. The census is expected to be completed on January 10. The first three days will focus on carnivores including tigers and panthers. Volunteers will note down scat, pug marks on the earth and claw marks on trees. They will also take photographs and record details about their sightings which would later be compiled and analyzed.
The census team would enumerate the prey base for tigers like elephants, deer and Indian Guars and count species and numbers of plants, shrubs and herbs in a particular radius in the forest. The forest officials said there are 12 transect lines in each forest range through which the volunteers would travel.
They would look for presence of animals from 6 am - 9 am and, in the afternoon, would enumerate the extent of vegetation in the forest areas.
Once completed, the data would be compiled on January 11 and be, subsequently, be sent to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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