Sahyadri Tiger Reserve may have the big cats again

Soon, the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve (STR) will overcome a huge dichotomy — of being a tiger project sans tigers — with plans to re-stock it with big cats from other habitats. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has constituted a team last week to suggest measures for tiger recovery in the STR. Once completed, this will be the first such tiger relocation in the wild in Maharashtra.

The team includes officials from the NTCA, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Maharashtra forest department. It will evaluate the feasibility of ecologically unsustainable projects in the landscape like mining and windmills, which affect movements of carnivores from source populations down south and suggest measures for strengthening tiger corridors.

The NTCA said considering the long-term conservation of tigers in the landscape, "it is imperative to constitute a team for suggesting measures for tiger recovery."

"Tigers may be relocated from source populations like Vidarbha, where man-animal conflict is increasing due to habitat pressures and rising tiger numbers," a senior forest department official told DNA, adding this could be done in a year.

The 1,165.56 sq km STR covers the Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary and Chandoli National Park, including a 600.12 sq km core and 565.45 sq km buffer in Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Ratnagiri. The 2014 tiger census recorded the presence of five to seven tigers.

Officials admitted that they lacked resident, breeding cats due to a break in the reserve's connectivity to habitats like Karnataka's Kali Tiger Reserve by activities like bauxite mining, which has long-term consequences. This year's tiger estimation has found only indirect evidences like scats, sans direct sightings.

"We plan to release two pairs of tigers, namely two females and one male each, at Koyna and Chandoli. Healthy ungulates from the Sagareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, Sanjay Gandhi National Park and the Katraj Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre can be released grid-wise to enhance herbivore numbers," he added.

These tigers will be acclimatized at Sagareshwar in Sangli to overcome habitat challenges before being released in to the wild. "The STR's terrain is hilly and different from the Central Indian landscape, but tigers in the two areas, especially the northern Western Ghats, have genetic similarities," the official added.

Tiger translocation has helped enhance tiger population in reserves like Panna and Sariska, where poaching had wiped them off. Cambodia, where tigers are extinct, has sought India's help to re-introduce them.

Maharashtra has six tiger reserves. The 2014 tiger census said India has 2,226 tigers, up from 1,706 in 2010. Maharashtra has around 190 such big cats, more than the figure of 169 in 2010.