Tirunelveli: As many as 32 pugmarks of Tigers were recorded in the Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger reserve (KMTR) here during the first phase of the wild life estimation carried out for six days from January 23.
The first phase of the estimation was carried out at the 895 sq.km core areas comprising of seven ranges and 30 beats along with the forested buffer zone extending for around 236 sq.km of the country’s 17 tiger reserve in the western ghats of Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts as prescribed by the National conservation authority involving 160 frontline staff including forester, forest guards, forest watchers and anti-poaching watchers along with the 90 volunteers.
The volunteers represented members of the village forest committees, college students and naturalists,’ said Kanchana, deputy director of KMTR. The foresters and volunteers divided into 52 teams camped in the remote locations inside the forest and intensively searched the areas for direct and indirect evidences of not only tigers but also its co-predators and prey species.
The teams collected data about the status of the wild life habitats in KMTR. The first phase of the exercise was said to very fruitful this year as according to the deputy director, Kanchana, 32 pugmarks of tiger were recorded during the six-day survey.
The volunteers in the 52 teams too recorded 18 pugmarks of leopards, of which one was obtained from the Kanyakumari sanctuary, while the rest 17 were recorded in the Tirunelveli wild life sanctuary. The plaster casts of the pugmarks of the tiger and leopard were collected and the enumerators too collected scat samples of the carnivores that would be analysed at the wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun to ascertain the age and sex of the animals.
The second phase of the wild life estimation will be the camera trapping. The cameras will be fixed based on the first phase of the survey, explained a forest official. He added that the final phase of the survey would be carried out at the WII laboratories, where the data, plaster casts of pugmarks and scat samples collected will be analysed to finalise the population of the carnivores and their prey animals.
