Are camera trapped tigers resident individuals with established territories in our state or simply vagrants or opportunistic migrants encountered during their foraging forays?
Dr Manoj-Sumati R. Borkar
The recent camera trappings of a solitary tiger in Bhagwan Mahveer National Park and that of a tigress with her two cubs at Satre village of Sattari have been injecting a lot of cheer in the wildlife circles of the state. And rightly so, because tiger our national animal is an endangered cat as per IUCN assessment, and has also been placed in Schedule I list of the Indian Wild Life Protection Act invoking the highest conservation concern and efforts for their immediate protection and long term conservation. The task is arduous given their severely fragmented habitat and declining population across the country.
Several attempts have been made to assess the presence and population of tigers in Goa specially within the precincts of our protected areas, and little that we know has been inferred on the basis of camera trappings, sporadic sightings and indirect evidences such as the scat, pug marks, and kills recorded by forest officials. The first camera trappings for tiger in Goa were successfully done by Ulhas Karanth in 2012 at Mhadei. Sustained and enthusiastic efforts by committed Range Forest officer Paresh Porob in 2013 and retired officer Prakash Salelkar in 2017 and 2018 have yielded valuable information on the tiger’s presence and numbers in pockets of Mhadei Wildlife sanctuary.
The recent camera evidence of tiger in Bhagwan Mahaveer National park is the first record for that area. But for how long are we going to remain trapped in the photo-trapping? It is time to go beyond this conventional field technique that has been in use since early 1990s.
Perhaps the big cat came into limelight for the first time way back in 2009 ,when a tiger was snare trapped and allegedly shot in the Keri village, and its carcass burnt to destroy the evidence to escape law by the offenders. The proceedings of the investigation cascaded into blame-game with forest officers being accused of assaulting the suspects in custody.
Further, the inconclusive forensic report by the Wildlife Institute of India could not present evidences for prosecution and a serious wildlife offence got swept under the carpet without penal action !
The sightings of this majestic cat in Sattari have been on a rise since last one decade and the wildlife wing of the state has reasons to both rejoice and worry. Their presence in our state indicates our protected wilderness areas offer the right combination of climate, substrate, vegetation and prey base for its survival and sustenance. Of course, their mere presence does not confirm residential status.
Notwithstanding species specific evidences provided by camera traps, there are critical gaps in our understanding of tiger ecology in Goa. We are unsure about their numbers and often tentative counts are released by authorities, contrary to the thumb rule that carnivore populations are best enumerated in density; by relating numbers to the area of the space
it occupies.
The story must now move beyond the camera traps, to unravel other dimensions of their ecology here. Carnivore guilds, resource partitioning, niches, competition, intra-guild predation are important issues that need prioritized attention, if the Government has genuine intentions of declaring a Tiger Reserve within its jurisdictional limits. These tasks are complex and will necessitate involvement of trained and experienced wildlife biologists. In the past there was an attempt to gather momentum for proposed Tiger Reserve by inviting A J T Johnsingh of the Wildlife Institute of India to do the ground truthing, but the effort did not reach its logical conclusion.
One must understand that the entire stretch of protected areas in Goa is a continuous linear expanse contiguous with Western Ghats that extends through the two adjacent states. It is known that spatial requirements are gender specific and a tiger needs about 60 to 100km2 of territory where as the tigress will settle for about 20 km 2. This means that tigers can easily stray in and out of Goa from the neighbouring Bhimgad Wildlife sanctuary and Kali Tiger Reserve of Karnataka, the latter known to have a sizeable population of the cat. The Tillari valley of Maharshtra also offers a contiguous tiger landscape for the unhindered movement of the cat between the three states. These geographical positions raise a critical question that must be addressed, but has been long sidelined.
Are the camera trapped tigers resident individuals with established territories in our state jurisdiction or simply vagrants or at best opportunistic migrants encountered during their foraging forays? Well, the answers can come only through a more intensive, systematic placement of camera traps across their range in the state. Also, the photo traps have to be laid in a statistically confident manner to build a photo-library for individualizing the tigers from their pelt stripe pattern and arrive at a confident count. It is also important that the other indices of potential tiger habitat are investigated in our protected areas. This will demand enumerating the herbivore prey base, mapping the waterholes, and identifying potential human-tiger conflict interface.
It will also be important to invest sincerely in people’s sensitization and solicit their partnership particularly in the villages within and in proximity of the tiger landscape of Goa. If we want the people to partake and support tiger conservation efforts in the state, their hostility towards the conservation mandate must be turned into acceptance. This is easier said than done especially given the recent resentment by villagers of Caranzol and Kumthol who marched to the office of RFO Mhadei in a mood of dissent.
People who share their habitat with wildlife feel insecure about their livelihood, simply because our conservation programs are regulatory and non-inclusive. And this gap must be addressed
urgently.
