The government of India has identified wildlife conservation as one of its key goals

India has a wide variety of flora and fauna and the government has identified conservation of wildlife as one of its key goals. None other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed his commitment on many global platforms about promoting environmental and wildlife conservation. He has now assigned a target of conservation and protection of big cat species. This is after achieving the target of doubling the number of tigers ahead of time. The target also includes 50 cheetahs during the next five years. Already, the exercise of inducting eight cheetahs from Namibia is over. It is the first inter-continental large carnivore translocation project. With their arrival, India has become the only country where all five members of the big ‘cat species’ are now present. On the subject, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said – “Decades ago, the age-old link of biodiversity that was broken and became extinct, today we have a chance to reconnect it. Today the cheetah has returned to the soil of India.” Incidentally, the last cheetah in India was found dead in Chhattisgarh in 1947 and was officially declared extinct in 1952. India goes all out to increase wildlife species.

The authorities expect cheetahs to help restore the open forest and grassland ecosystem in India and the program will help in the conservation of biodiversity. Society would reap benefits like improvement of ecosystem processes in the form of water security, carbon absorption and soil moisture conservation. It could also increase livelihood opportunities for the local communities. This could be through eco-development and eco-tourism activities. The arrival of cheetahs has made India the only country that is home to all five members of the ‘big cat’ species – tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard and cheetah. The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 has notified animals like tigers, elephants, rhinoceros, lions, etc. as endangered species. They enjoy the highest degree of protection.

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Tiger poaching in India on the rise - 76 killed between January and October 2016

Tigers are India's national animals and poaching of tigers is on the rise. This year, around 76 tigers have been killed in the period January till October, 2016. Madhya Pradesh has recorded the maximum number of these deaths and account for nearly a third of all mortalities. Karnataka follows - it boasts of harboring the highest tiger population and has recorded as many as 13 tiger deaths.
These figures are the highest since 2010 and, in 2015, there were 69 tiger deaths reported. The trend for 2016 is a reason for worry.
This has been reported in zeenews.india.com dated 7 November 2016.

Twenty seizures were registered in the country till November, also the highest since 2010.
The data has been made available by 'tigernet', a collaborative effort of the National Tiger Conservation Authority and TRAFFIC-India. 41 of the 76 deaths are still being investigated and the remaining have been attributed to direct or indirect human intervention like poaching, poisoning, electrocution, road accidents. And, of course, there are instances of tigers attacking each other and natural causes.
Tiger habitats were under tremendous pressure. There have been some success stories where tigers are breeding well which, in turn, has helped to increase their numbers but this is in isolated pockets and also not in all tiger sanctuaries. In saturated reserves, cubs move out in search of their own territory and are vulnerable to poaching and road accidents.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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Population of tigers in the Sunderbans on the rise

The tigers in Sunderbans in Bengal seem to be doing well because, for the first time, a data-collection exercise has revealed that the population of these swamp tigers is on the rise even outside the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve (STR) which is a protected area.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 8 September 2016.

As revealed by the camera trap data of 2015 - the latest set of numbers thrown up by the yearly exercise - the presence of at least 22 tigers in the South 24-Parganas forest division has been confirmed. This is spread out over an area of more than 1,500sq km and is outside the 2,500sq km of the protected area.
The 2016 exercise has been taken up and is still under way but, going by trends and field reports, the authorities appear to be confident that the population of the big cat is very much stable.
Incidentally, the camera traps have caught the images of four cubs outside the STR - this figure has not been included in the figure of 22 and can be interpreted as a pointer to the fact that areas outside the core zone have a good population of tigers that are breeding well.
The first camera-trap exercise in this zone was carried out in 2012 and it had recorded at least 18 tigers. Out of the current lot, 11 were found in the Raidighi zone, nine in Ramganga and two in Herobhanga.


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