M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Feb 18: A minimum of three tigers can be translocated to the Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR).
Deputy Director (North division) of PTR Kumar Ashish said, “Chief conservator of forest and field director Kumar Ashutosh and deputy director (South division) Mukesh Kumar think that translocation of tigers here should start with three of them and it is quite feasible and viable too.”
However, he also said, “It is our proposal for 3 tigers to be brought here but the final say rests with the National Tiger Conservation Authority as it is to take a final call.”
Tigers need prey and it is the most important recipe for the tiger.
On the issue of the prey base, Ashish said, “We have enough prey base that can cater to the feed of the tigers.”
A tiger needs a 500-prey base to keep going in a year. One prey keeps a tiger preoccupied with it for a couple of days before another carnivore comes in like leopards, hyenas, and jackals.
PTR also has over 4000 deers and 80 bison. There is no sambhar here in Jharkhand for that matter and PTR is also not an exception.
However, Palamu and Garhwa districts also have a large number of nilgai (blue bulls). Farmers see them as a threat as they destroy their standing crops and vegetables more ruthlessly than the elephants.
Kumar Ashish said, “Our PTR welcomes nilgais. We will be too happy to have as many of the nilgais as possible. It is a suitable replacement for the sambhar and our carnivores here will not be disappointed to see them around in this tiger reserve.”
He also said that PTR needs to be fenced like the Panna tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh where the authorities have done stone wall fencing and chain link fencing around the NH 39.
PTR is crisscrossed by state highway 9 and around 12 kilometers of double railway lines as well.
“There is a strong need to have village boundary fencing to keep stray dogs at bay from the tiger reserve here. Village boundary fencing will help check straying of our herbivores also into the human habitation where they get killed or maimed,” Kumar Ashish said.
He said village boundary fencing will minimize man-animal conflict too.
Two villages Latu and Kujrum are located in the core area of PTR. Their relocation has been hanging fire for almost a decade.
Public perception is that PTR wants these two villages to be out of the tiger reserve for the sake of the wildlife.
On this Ashish said, “We want relocation of these two villages in the larger interest of the households here.”
There are 210 households in these two villages.
Ashish said their lives are second-hand. Just for being in the core area of PTR, these people are denied and deprived of many of the government schemes and projects.
“But PTR never exerts any pressure on them to move out. Moving out from the core area of the tiger reserve is purely voluntary,” reminded Ashish.
Panna tiger reserve has so far relocated 15 villages and has freed its 500 square kilometers of all the biotic pressure providing a very conducive habitat for both the carnivores and the herbivores there.
However, at PTR, it is a complex and congested situation not favourable to the tigers.
A free area will augment huge grasslands, better water facility, and better monitoring and maintenance which PTR aims at doing but there is its inherent problem.
Deputy Director North division Kumar Ashish and South division Mukesh Kumar had been to Bhopal and Panna tiger reserve very recently to know and learn from them about the intricacies, delicacies and challenges involved in the translocation of the tigers.
These two PTR officers had a series of meetings, discussions and field visits with the concerned wildlife officers there. They saw an upcoming centre of injured wildlife and its treatment besides one soft release centre there.