In what points to the need for strengthening conservation measures in non-protected forest areas, an exercise by the state forest department has pointed to how these regions, which fall outside tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries have around a fourth of Maharashtra's tiger population.
"The National Tiger Conservation Authority's (NTCA) tiger census, which is conducted every four years detected 190 tigers in Maharashtra in 2014. However, a camera trapping exercise by the forest department to confirm these figures has identified 203 tigers," said a senior official from the state forest department, adding that while this monitoring was otherwise conducted in tiger reserves, they had extended it to non-tiger reserve areas too.
The exercise had found that among tiger reserves, while the Tadoba Andhari tiger project had the highest concentration of tigers at 61, it was followed by Melghat (42), Pench (23), Navegaon Nagzira (7) and Bor and Sahyadri (three each). In wildlife sanctuaries, Umred Karhandla has four tigers and Tipeshwar has two such big cats.
Among non-protected areas, the Chandrapur territorial area has 43 tigers, next only to Tadoba, followed by nine in the region between Bhandara and Nagpur, four in the Pandharkawada division near Tipeshwar and one each at Amravati, Kondhali- Kalmeshwar block. Thus, while tiger reserves have 139 animals — the bulk of the tiger population in Maharashtra — the non-protected areas too have a thriving tiger ecosystem with the recorded presence of 58 big cats. The wildlife sanctuaries have six tigers.
However, the department has counted just adult tigers here and not sub-adults and cubs in the year-long camera trap monitoring exercise which concluded late last year.
Protected areas refers to habitats which have been designated as tiger projects, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and conservation reserves.
The official, however, warned that the department's figures could not be compared with those from the NTCA's tiger census. "The NTCA's statistics are on a landscape basis, while our figures are not," he said, adding that these landscape areas comprised of thousands of hectares of land including neighbouring territorial regions.
A senior forest official admitted that conservation and protection was given little importance in non-PAs, which led to man-animal conflict and activities like poaching. "Tiger-centric wildlife management necessary," he said, noting that most focus was on wildlife in protected areas.
Maharashtra has six national parks, 48 sanctuaries and four conservation reserves. The state also has six tiger reserves.
