With man-animal conflict on the rise in Maharashtra, the state government is planning to translocate tigers from saturated landscapes like the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve and Chandrapur in Vidarbha to areas where they are less in number. The state will rope in the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to identify sites prone to conflict and suitable locations for this shifting.
Some probable areas where tigers can be relocated include Gadchiroli, the Navegaon Nagzira and Bor tiger projects and the Chaprala Wildlife Sanctuary, though the final decision will be taken after a scientific study of the landscape and prey base. Once completed, this will be Maharashtra's first tiger relocation in the wild.
More importantly, the over Rs 19.17 crore MoU will cover conflict mitigation in fragmented landscapes with human presence like Pandharkawada in Yavatmal, where a "problem tigress" nicknamed 'Avni,' who was blamed for 13 deaths, was controversially shot down by a private hunter hired by the state forest department in November 2018.
A senior state forest department official said the WII would identify areas with man-animal conflict like Chandrapur and Yavatmal, and suggest minimisation measures.
The official told DNA that while Gadchiroli had tiger presence till the 1990s, it was devoid of breeding tigers as Left-wing extremism made monitoring difficult. The Navegaon Nagzira tiger project has an adverse male to female tiger ratio, with around six males and three females compared to the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), with about two to three females per male.
Areas like TATR and the neighbouring Bramhapuri forest division, which had rising numbers of tigers, were witnessing a rise in conflict and human deaths due to habitat pressures. The TATR's core and buffer have over 80 of the estimated 203 tigers in Maharashtra, making it the most tiger-dense landscape in the state with the neighbouring Brahmapuri forest division (40), which caters to the spill-over population from Tadoba.
This saturation makes it essential to curate and manage tiger numbers.
He added that around 23 people were killed in attacks by tigers and leopards in this year in Chandrapur in 2018.
