Sariska to roar, with borrowed tigers - Shift from Ranthambore to begin in June

10 May, 2008

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Sariska to roar, with borrowed tigers - Shift from Ranthambore to begin in June


Jaipur, May 10:

Come June, Sariska will roar again.

Wildlife officials are putting finishing touches to an ambitious project to relocate tigers from Ranthambore to the Sariska reserve, in the news after a count revealed that all the big cats had disappeared.

P.R. Sinha, director of the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehra Dun, confirmed that the first phase of the project would take off in June.

“The relocation of the first tiger in the sanctuary is definitely on sometime next month but the exact date has to be decided by the state government. The first step has to be taken now. Subsequent measures of making the habitat conducive for the big cats, including relocation of villages, traffic control, and improving biotic conditions, have to be gradual and is going to be a long-drawn process.”

The Rs 1.5-crore project was planned after the cat count at Sariska, around 140km from Jaipur in Alwar district, became nil, thanks to merciless poaching.

Agencies such as the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Wildlife Institute of India, World Wildlife Fund and the Rajasthan wildlife department drew up the plan for a joint fight-back to save the national animal.

Ranthambore sanctuary in Sawai Madhopur district, 200km from Sariska, has a tiger population of 40 to 45, including 14 cubs. But it now has a problem of plenty with reports of territorial fights between the big cats. Some of the older ones are even said to have been chased out of the forest by the younger tigers.

Under the relocation plan, the first to be shifted would be a tigress that would be placed within a soft enclosure for a few days to help it acclimatise with the new surroundings. Once the tigress gets used to its new environs, the cage door would be opened for it to wander off in the forest, rich in prey base, to establish its own territory.

Later, a pair of tigers — a male and a female — would be relocated, said Rajpal Singh, a member of the state-empowered committee on wildlife and forests.

The construction of the soft enclosure, a top-open, spacious cage with food and water arrangements, will be completed by the end of this month.

Wildlife experts welcomed the move but wondered whether the relocation was happening too soon. Tiger conservationist Belinda Wright, who considers the disappearing Sariska cats the biggest conservation scandal of modern times, said there was still some groundwork left to be done.

“The relocation of tigers would have been preferred once the villages within the sanctuary are shifted and there is less traffic. The most important issue facing the survival of the tiger today is that of dedicated space to live and breathe,” she said.

But Wright applauded the state government’s initiative, saying the first-of-its-kind relocation of tigers in the country “is definitely worth a try despite the risks”.

The project entails relocation of 11 villages from the core areas inside the 800sqkm Sariska forest, minimising traffic inside and improving its resilient eco-system set in the Aravalli hills.

However, traffic is still heavy as some 2,500 people live inside the sanctuary in 28 villages with about 35,000 cattle. In addition, there are about 200 villages surrounding the park.