Tamil Nadu to count its tigers

Chennai: The official count of the big cat population in Tamil Nadu will start in 10 days, a senior forest official said on Sunday.

The Tamil Nadu Forest Department will employ the customary pug mark method to gauge the "range" and "presence" of tigers in the state, C.K. Sreedharan, principal chief conservator of forests and chief wildlife warden, TN Forest Department, told Gulf News on Sunday

"We are not looking for exact numbers but to understand the range and presence of the tiger in the state," he said.

The tiger census, to be funded by the centre and the state, will be held from February 15 to February 22.

India's national animal, the tiger has been in the news lately for its reported dwindling numbers in major forest reserves.

This has led to the formation of a 13-member National Tiger Conservation Authority headed by a union minister at the Centre.

The use of the pug mark method, first introduced in India in 1934 in Bihar, has been severely criticised by conservationists like Valmik Thapar.

Thapar termed the pug mark technique, which uses plaster of paris casts, to capture different shapes and sizes of the left hind paw of the tiger to ascertain numbers, as "primitive".

He had made this observation during a recent visit to Chennai to publicise his book, The Last Tiger, Struggling for Survival.

However, responding to the criticism, Sreedharan said, "The pug mark method to count tigers is more than sufficient. It is a good system and provides us a fair idea of the numbers."

The Forest Department lacked the funds, trained staff and time to use sophisticated methods like the "camera trap", he said.

"We don't have the staff to go around planting cameras near waterholes," he said.

However, he termed the DNA scanning, where the skin or the scat (droppings) of the tiger is collected and scanned as an "ideal" technique. But, he said, the Forest Department will not be able to support such an expensive project for a census.

S. Anand, education officer at World Wide Fund for Nature, Tamil Nadu, who has participated in a black buck census, also agrees with the warden.

"It's difficult for the Forest Department to opt for any other counting technique. They will have to first educate the ground level staff and this requires money and time. The pug mark method is 90 per cent accurate," he said.

The 2001 census showed Tamil Nadu had 88 tigers, 29 of those were in the Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) in Tirunelveli.

Tigers in the state are largely found in KMTR, Mudumalai and the Indira Gandhi National Park in Polatchi, in the Western Ghats.

The Tamil Nadu's tiger census, which is part of a national operation, will cover 13 sanctuaries and national parks in the state.

The census will also ascertain the numbers of other predators like wolves, panthers, hyenas and their prey.

The Tiger Task Force set up by the Centre to probe the disappearance of the tiger had said that Tamil Nadu had fared better in saving the big cat.