Eight tigers from Tadoba to be resettled in Sahyadri reserve

The resettlement proposal, prepared by IFS officer Clement Ben when he was field director of the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, will also help re-populate this reserve, forest officials say. It has just three resident tigers and nine visiting tigers from Karnataka and Goa

MUMBAI: Eight tigers will be relocated between reserves in Maharashtra, a human intervention, paradoxically, to rein in their numbers in the Tadoba-Andhari and Pench tiger reserves, thronged by tourists for their tiger sightings.

The aim is to curb territorial fights between the big cats, some of them fatal, and their attacks on humans.

The tigers – five female and three male – will be resettled from these two reserves in Vidarbha in eastern Maharashtra, to the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, in the Konkan, in Western Maharashtra.

It is hoped that the plan, cleared by the Union ministry of environment and forests on Thursday, will curb the now frequent territorial fights between the big cats, some of them fatal, and their attacks on humans.

The resettlement proposal, prepared by IFS officer Clement Ben when he was field director of the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, will also help re-populate this reserve, forest officials say. It has just three resident tigers and nine visiting tigers from Karnataka and Goa.

Forest officials say tigers in the Sahyadri’s wilds are not reproducing frequently enough. This was, in fact, mentioned in a presentation made to the National Tiger Conservation Authority in 2022. The Tadoba-Andhari Reserve, on the other hand, is home to 95 tigers, in addition to 250 others in Chandrapur district.

Additional chief secretary (forests) Milind Mhaiskar said, “The relocation plan is a welcome decision and long-awaited. While helping to curb the man-animal conflict in the Tadoba region, it will also help re-establish tiger reserves like Sahyadri.”

It is still not clear how the tigers will be transported – by road or air-lifted via helicopter. Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve field director Prabhunath Shukla said this will be decided at a meeting next week.

Environmentalists are divided on the wisdom of a plan based on simple arithmetic, in this case, headcount. Suresh Chopane, who heads the non-profit Green Planet in Chandrapur, says, “Tigers are multiplying quickly in Vidarbha, and at least two big cats are killed in territorial fights, in Tadoba-Andhari, every year. Just this week, one tiger died and another was seriously injured in one such conflict. Tigers need a large area and it’s getting very crowded for them in Chandrapur district.”

Tiger expert Dr Anish Andheria of the Wildlife Conservation Trust has a very different perspective. Not all tiger habitats are the same, neither are all tigers, and this could put the translocated cats at a disadvantage, he believes. “The Vidarbha and Sahyadri tiger reserves differ significantly in topography, rainfall, wild prey densities, habitat connectivity, and attitude of local communities towards large carnivores. These differences account for the huge difference in tiger densities between the two landscapes.’’

Andheria says it is unwise to relocate tigers from the Tadoba region into Sahyadri, where prey is scarce. “Tigers are opportunistic predators and can easily shift to domestic animals such as cows and buffalo calves.”

Also, the thin, linear, strip-like contours of the Sahyadri reserve make it easy for a tiger to access villages in the periphery, increasing the probability of them straying into human populations.

The density of tigers in the northern reaches of the Western Ghats is five times lower than in Vidarbha, he says, adding that tigers of the Western Ghats are far more elusive than those of Vidarbha.

“If restocking Sahyadri is the aim, the best option is to translocate females from the southern part of Maharashtra. Without a doubt, although difficult to capture, these tigers would have a far better chance of adjusting to the habitat and rainfall regime of Sahyadri than those from Central India (Vidarbha), Andheria pointed out.