Govt to transfer male tiger to Motichur

Forget Corbett, Rajaji National Park is the new hub for tigers in Uttarakhand. But, the skewed sex ratio has forced the state government to consider translocation of a male tiger.

Updated on: Mar 3, 2012, 22:29:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Forget Corbett, Rajaji National Park is the new hub for tigers in Uttarakhand. But, the skewed sex ratio has forced the state government to consider translocation of a male tiger.

The Wildlife Institute of India and state forest department has got pictures of over 13 tigers in the national park known for its huge population of elephants.

Rajaji park named after freedom fighter C Rajagopalachari is on the banks of river Ganga to the east of Haridwar and is a unique hilly grassland on the foothills of Shivalik range. Its grassland helps better spotting of tigers than in Corbett which is mostly mountainous with dense forest cover.

The increasing tiger population in the national park has posed a new problem for the state forest department – skewed sex ratio in Motichur forest range. Of the 13 tigers, only three are male and rest are female. "There are three tigresses in Motichur forest range and no male tiger," said Anil Baluni, a functionary of the state forest advisory council.

The Uttarakhand state forest department is now planning to relocate a tiger -- either from Rajaji itself or from Corbett Tiger Reserve -- to Motichur.

Normally, tiger are relocated to reserves such as Sariska in Rajasthan and Panna in Madhya Pradesh, which has lost all its tigers. Translocation of a male tiger just for breeding is rare.

"We don’t want Panna like experience where female tigresses vanished in absence of a male tiger. If the male tiger would have been translocated in Panna there was a possibility of reviving the tiger population," an official said.

The over cautious forest department officials will soon be seeking help of WII to seek permission of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to translocate a male tiger to Motichur. Once the permission comes, a suitable tiger will be identified and process for relocation will begin. "It would take a few months," an official said.

Local conservationists, however, claim that increasing human pressure on Rajaji may pose a threat to tigers and urged the state government to take corrective action.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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