Environment minister
Jayanthi Natarajan said that the amendment will also make sure that the rights
of indigenous people depending on forests are
protected.
NEW DELHI: Tigers need much more space than our protected
areas or tiger reserves provide for currently. While that's true for all
wildlife, a recent study published this month in Biological Conservation journal
has highlighted how lack of space could be linked to a fast disappearance of
tigers from certain habitats, particularly tropical dry forest areas. Sariska
and Panna tiger reserves, both tropical dry forests experienced complete
extinction of tigers in 2004 and 2009; the study explains what may have led to
their complete disappearance.
Some tigers have been re-introduced in
Panna and Sariska.
The study documents the space requirements of tigers
in Panna tiger reserve before the extinction of tigers only to find a major
mismatch in scale of their ranges and the sanctuary size, which exposes tigers
to various anthropogenic threats including poaching and retaliatory killings
outside the boundary. The reason for such large home ranges of tigers in
tropical dry forests is still being studied, authors said but could be linked to
ecological factors like prey population, water or shade.
The study
involved field studies between 1996 and 2005 that monitored tiger movement
through radio telemetry and direct sightings in the 543 sqkm area of Panna.
Annual home ranges of both male and female tigers were estimated and then
overlaid on the sanctuary area boundary revealing how home ranges often breached
the sanctuary boundary. According to the authors, this is the first
comprehensive study of tiger home ranges in a tropical dry forest area and one
of the longest studies on tiger in the sub-continent. The study documented
detailed information on six radio-collared tigers over a period of nine years.
While conducting the nine-year observations, the team also found some intriguing
features. For instance, "Male tiger territories were not exclusive as generally
believed. Instead, it was observed that females mated with several males in
addition to the territorial tiger. But the role of these non-territorial males
can be important but little is known about these tigers," said Raghu Singh
Chundawat, lead author of the study.
The team concluded that home range of breeding or nursing tigers extended
beyond the boundary of the sanctuary.
In fact what happened in Panna and
Sariska are a part of a larger trend, researchers warned. The largest tiger
habitat in India is in tropical dry forest category. But the probability of
survival of tigers in these areas is much lower than in other habitats like
tropical moist forests, alluvial grasslands or mangroves. Interestingly, more
than 85% of the sanctuaries located in tropical dry forests are way smaller than
Panna and have either lost the tigers already or sit with high risk of tiger
extinction.
"The bottom line is that tigers need more space, and one may
need to think out of the box, if tigers are to have a future in the already
stressed landscapes," said Koustubh Sharma, co-author of the study.
The
study recommends that a straight forward solution to the problem will be to
protect larger forest areas but that's a difficult proposition in human
dominated areas. "Small patches embedded in large landscapes can be conserved as
a series of stepping stones to interconnect populations," the study said.
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