Time again, for the big cats to be counted

TNN | Dec 27, 2011, 02.41AM IST BHOPAL: A big cat census covering all tiger reserves of the country, including the six in Madhya Pradesh (MP), is slated for next year, a top official said. It would now be an annual affair. Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Dharmendra Shukla said the national tiger conservation authority (NTCA) has decided to do the census annually in the reserves, from next year. Shukla said the census in the state would be done in cooperation with the Wildlife Institute of India ( WII). However, he added, the tiger counting being carried out in the forest areas every four years would also continue in tandem. "In the run up to the census, a two-day regional training workshop for forest department officials of MP, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra has been organised in state's Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) from December 28," according to Shukla. Logistics, however, are still not in place. Shukla said the census exercise will take some time since the cameras and others modern equipment for the job have yet to be acquired. "We are going to collect data on the big cat using cameras on the transit routes and then analyse it," he said. "We have been assigned the task of collecting and analysing the data,'' he added. As a prelude to the census operation, a two-day regional training workshop for forest department officials of MP, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra has been organised in state's Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) from December 28. ""More than 100 forest department officials drawn from Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and MP are going to take part in the workshop," Panna park's deputy director V S Parihar said. The big cat census will cover Kanha, Pench, Bandhavgarh, Satpura, Panna and Sanjay Dubri tiger reserves. FEWER ROARS IN MP MP has lost its pre-eminent tag as the country's tiger state to Karnataka, with the population of this magnificient feline in the state declining to 257 by 2011, from 300 tigers in 2008. Panna lost its tigers to poachers by early 2009. Forest officials, however, refuse to accept that the striped cat's numbers had declined in Kanha and claim that something must have gone wrong with the last tiger census. On the other hand, the tiger population had increased to 300 in Karnataka according to the tiger census of 2001, up from from 290 in 2008. Tiger census report of 2008 Tiger census report of 2011 Tiger Reserves Kanha 89 60 Bandhavgarh 47 59 Panna 24 03 Satpura 39 43 Pench (MP-Maharashtra) 33 65 Sanjay Dubri Not known 05 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/Time-again-for-the-big-cats-to-be-counted/articleshow/11260339.cms