Big cat sighted again in Kuno, MP

After some state governments reported a decline in tiger population last year, there is some good news for tigers, at least in Madhya Pradesh.

Published on: Jan 28, 2006, 12:38:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After some state governments reported a decline in tiger population last year, there is some good news for tigers, at least in Madhya Pradesh. A year after tigers were reported missing from Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary by the state forest department, the new evidence now shows that tigers are still present there.

A team of students from Environment Biology department of Delhi University with their team leader Faiyaz Khudsar, spotted pugmarks and collected scat of tigers in the sanctuary.

“We believe that there are two tigress and a cub in the sanctuary. Presence of male tiger is not ruled out,” Khudsar told Hindustan Times, adding that the evidence will be forwarded to Directorate of Project Tiger.

The team was there between January 16-21 to participate in the national wildlife census. The new revelation has generated a lot of enthusiasm among conservationalists as 2005's state government census had shown that there are no tigers in the sanctuary.

“It was an extensive survey in which the forest officials failed to find any pugmarks and officially declared that there are no tigers in Kuno,” an official said. But the modern method adopted by the students has once again proved the officials records to be wrong.

Earlier, Rajasthan government had been claiming that there were tigers in Sariska, when, in fact, there was none. Kuno is a repeat but in a different way. “There is something wrong with the census system of state governments which needs to be corrected,” Khudsar said. Kuno is in the ravines of Chambal and has lot of scope for wildlife.

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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