The management of Pench Tiger Reserve (PTR) has started camera trap-based ‘tiger census’ to know exact number of big cats in its buffer area. PTR is witnessing a drastic increase in number of man-animal conflict incidents recently. Many humans were killed in the tiger attack cases. Tigers deaths also were reported in the area as the big cats were found venturing near human settlements. Back to back man-animal conflict incidents in Pench and its surrounding areas have raised concern for the Forest Department. This has also panicked villagers living near the forest areas. As per the wildlife experts, the number of tigers has increased in the buffer area of the reserve as semi-adult tigers were in search of new territory in buffer and territorial forest areas in Pench, Ramtek and Parseoni areas. In last two months, back-to-back human deaths in tiger attacks made villagers anguished.

 

They are demanding the foresters to capture problem tigers as they have started venturing near their villages and agriculture lands. Keeping the sentiments of villagers in mind, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) asked forest officials to capture the problem tigers in the vicinity. Teams are deployed to search and rescue problem tigers from the forest area. In the process, the PTR management observed that the killing of villagers was carried out by different tigers which is also a matter of grave concern for them. Therefore, the PTR management has decided to count tigers residing in the Paoni buffer area which has become a hotbed of man-animal conflict in last one year. “We normally conduct a yearly tiger census with the help of Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

 

The census for the year 2023 is already underway in our tiger reserve, but it will not help us to get the latest count of the big cats in the buffer area as the WII study is for the last year,” Dr Prabhunath Shukla, Deputy Director, PTR told The Hitavada. “The Maharashtra side of PTR has 41 tigers. However, the number has increased in recent times as sub-adult tigers are now searching new territories mainly in buffer and territorial forest areas. To get the latest number of tigers, we have started camera trap-based tiger census in Paoni buffer area where the most cases of man-animal conflict were reported,” said Dr Shukla. A specialised team is installing camera traps and monitoring images of the camera traps to get the number of tigers in the buffer area.

 

“We have installed more than 150 camera traps with locations in study grids of 1x1 km to increase the diversity of wildlife captured. Normally, WII installs its camera traps with a study grid of 2x2 kms distance but we reduced the distance to get accurate number of tigers in our area,” claimed the Deputy Director. “The process has already started and it will take two months span to get the whole data. Our teams are working on it day and night and after analysing lakhs of photographs captured by the camera traps we can get the number of tigers in Paoni buffer,” he added.