Missing tigers and low-tech support hamper conservation
NEWDELHI:The Royal Bengal Tiger is the most protected animal in India, but missing tigers are the weakest link in the conservation success story.
There’s hardly any mechanism to monitor tigers that have strayed out of their designated habitat. The flaw keeps drifters out of the loop and the forest officials have no clue about them.
Among the missing tigers in recent times was Ookhan of Tadoba-Andhari in Maharashtra. He was found this March at a place about 100km away from where he was spotted last almost four years ago. The photograph taken in 2013 helped track the seven-yearold male. Stripe patterns are unique to every tiger and that is their identity marker. Ookhan is a lucky break on a list of tigers that went missing .
The Maharashtra forest department is yet to trace Jai, the iconic tiger of Nagpur’s Umred Karhandla wildlife sanctuary, who went missing on April 18, 2016. A year later, and after searches across Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, forest officials have no clue if the animal with a radio collar around its neck is alive or dead. Ookhan or Jai are not stray cases. It is common for tigers occupying the rich prey base to push out weaker ones to the hinterland.
A tiger’s territory range from 10 to 12 square km, and the number of tigers moving out to different zones for food and water has increased recently with their population rising on the back of conservation efforts.
Scientists report 20% “turnover” in tiger population, meaning the older getting replaced by the younger generation every year. Likewise, tracking them becomes important for research and understanding the animal outside their protected areas.
The most common and timetested monitoring device is the radio collar, which weighs over a kilo, and emits signals through a transmitter or a satellite.
But Jai’s collar is on the blink, triggering fears that either the device is buried or thrown into a no-signal zone. That was the last word on Jai from the forest department. Rest has been rumours — from his death to being spotted in Telangana.
Jai, who reached Umred after losing a territorial war in Pench, went missing despite the collar.
Less than 5% of tigers in India are monitored round-the-clock through such collars, which is an expensive technology.
The low use of imported collars is primarily because of their high cost — about ₹4 lakh apiece — and high maintenance. A battery, which has to be replaced every year, has a price tag of about ₹50,000.
“Radio collars are expensive as the equipment is imported from the US and Germany. Nowhere in the world the entire population is collared; only a sample is done for research purpose,” said VB Mathur, director of the Dehradunbased Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
Independent tiger expert Raghu Chandawat agreed that collars are not effective because of their “high rate of failure” and poor “frequency of intercepts”.
Mathur countered that the fail rate was less than 1% as the signal is transmitted through two modes: transmitter or satellite. But he admitted that intercepts were an issue.
Another monitoring system is a camera trap. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has prescribed a protocol that includes collecting as many camera trap pictures of tigers, regular updating of albums, sharing it with divisional forest officials and matching them with the feline found in new areas to track from where they have come.
Of the 2,226 tigers in India, the WII has shared pictures of about 1,650 with forest departments of states to ensure the WII can help track a tiger spotted at a place for the first time.
But the database has not been effective as most departments failed to update records on tiger movements.
Inadequate monitoring has put Jai, Gabbar of Todaba, Sundari of Ranthambore and Corbett’s Khalli out of the radar.
Rajesh Gopal, secretary general of Global Tiger Forum secretariat, said it was not difficult to monitor most tigers, provided the NTCA protocol is followed.