Breeding centre planned in Nagpur to save wild buffaloes

NAGPUR : In order to protect and increase the wild buffalo population in Maharashtra, the state government is preparing a “conservation breeding programme” for the country’s endangered wildlife species. This will be the first of its kind project to be taken up in Central India.

Sudhakar Dole, member-secretary of the Maharashtra Zoo Authority (MZA) informed that the initiative was taken in view of the dwindling wild buffalo population in the state. A detailed project report is being prepared by the MZA under the new conservation effort, in this regard.

The state has only one wild buffalo sanctuary at Kolamarka in the Kamlapur range under Sironcha division in Maoist-hit Gadchiroli district.

The government upgraded the Kolamarka forest reserve, bordering the Indravati Tiger Reserves in Chhattisgarh, as a wild buffalo sanctuary in 2013. Today the area is home to around 15 genetically acceptable wild buffaloes.

Wild buffaloes, representative of the ancestors of domestic buffaloes in India, are nearing extinction in Asia.

The Kolamarka area is a corridor for wild buffaloes of the neighbouring Indravati National Park in the Bijapur district of Bastar where around 30 of the species have been identified so far.

Dole informed that male and female buffaloes from Kolamarka will be tranquilised and brought to Gorewada Wildlife Rescue centre at Nagpur for captive breeding.

One male and three to four females could be captured for this purpose and the buffaloes born at the centre would be released in Kolamarka forest once they reached adulthood.

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, the state forest department and MZA will play major roles in the functioning of the proposed breeding centre. The WII will have overall control because it has facilities like a pathology lab at which to identify genes of species, said Dole.