Panna reserve now 3 cubs full

Three tiny furballs now hold the success of India's tiger conservation in their tiny paws.

The newborn tiger cubs, spotted on Friday in Madhya Pradesh's Panna national park, herald the success of the controversial plan of relocating the big cats.

A survey last year found that the once-densely populated Panna reserve had lost all its tiger, mostly to poaching. In an effort to repopulate the park, a tigress from Bandhavgarh in Karnataka and a tiger from Pench in MP were moved to Panna.

"On Friday night, we spotted the three cubs with the tigress as they came out of a cave. The tigress apparently had decided to shift her cubs to a more suitable place," an ecstatic Panna National Park Field Director R Sreeniwas Murthy said.

Forest officials again got a clear sighting of the new family the next day — the mother and all three cubs.

Murthy said this was the first instance of a relocated tigress giving birth to healthy cubs.

Earlier, forest department officials had an inkling that the tigress was pregnant because it was not moving out of the cave near a waterfall for more than a month.

The department was keeping a close eye on her movements.

"We got it confirmed on Friday night and have prohibited tourist from visiting the area," Murthy said.

The Panna Tiger Reserve was found to have 24 tigers after the census in January 2006. But by December 2008 all the tigers were gone.

A tiger and a tigress moved from Ranthambore to Sariska in 2008 failed to breed.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Panna-reserve-now-3-cubs-full/Article1-541504.aspx

Tiger kills one and injures four in Bihar

Bettiah (Bihar): A tiger today killed one person and injured four others at Shahpur Parsauni village in Bihar's West Champaran district, police said.

Police said the tiger came out of the Valmiki Tiger Reseve Project and entered the house of one Hoshila Patel and killed him.

Four others includingtwo women were also injured.

The tiger is still inside the house of Patel and forest officials were trying to cage it, police said

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_tiger-kills-one-and-injures-four-in-bihar_1381136

Tourist menace in Corbett National Park

The night comes alive with loud music in one place, it shouldn't. These areresorts edging India's oldest national park, the Corbett.

Illegal resorts, built on the forest's buffer zone are killing tranquility by blocking natural trails.

''Tigers are intensely territorial, and each tiger can have a territory from 25-80 square kilometres. But with land limited and buffer areas increasingly being encroached upon, tigers often end up being poisoned by villagers or poached as they move out in search of new territory, food and water,'' said Imran Khan, Wildlife Expert.

In February, the Uttarakhand Government had declared 466 square kilometres around the Corbett reserve a buffer zone where no commercial activity is allowed, but the decades of delay in arriving at the decision has taken its toll. A clean-up will take years.

''I can tell you that the lack of progress on buffer zones is no accident, but deliberate so as to allow for development of such activities in the area,'' said Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment & Forest.

In fact, several states have been dragging their feet over declaring areas around tiger habitat's buffer zones.

• In Madhya Pradesh, six tiger sanctuaries are awaiting buffer zone notification.
• In Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka three sanctuaries each are also awaiting buffer zone notification.
• The same goes for two sanctuaries in Arunachal Pradesh.

"These are very, very important areas. By buffer we don't mean to elevate them to status of a park or a sanctuary. All that we are trying to do is to address the source and the dynamics of the tiger to reduce the dependency of the local people in the resources, which are there in the core areas of tiger reserves," said Rajesh Gopal, Head, National Tiger Conservation Authority.

For the survival of tigers, buffer zones around sanctuaries are critical. These are areas tigers use to move from one forest to another. Ironically habitats of our disappearing tigers remain unsecured - caught in bureaucratic paper-pushing and profiteering.

http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/tourist-menace-in-corbett-national-park-24317.php

Two more arrested in Tadoba tiger poaching case

CHANDRAPUR: Chimur forest officials, who are probing the tiger poaching case inside TATR, have arrested two more accused and have recovered two tiger nails from them.

In all six accused, all residents of two villages inside TATR were arrested. Three tiger nails, 20 bones and six wire traps with 90 snares were seized. After initial round of forest custody remand, five of the six accused have been sent into MCR for 14 days, while the main accused Mangaldas Madavi has been awarded FCR of two days on Wednesday.

"On the basis of information given by Mangaldas, we arrested Kawdu Madavi from Chandrapur and Ramesh Madavi from Jamni on Thursday night. A tiger nail has been recovered from each of them," said RFO BS Padve who is investigating the case.

The two accused purchased the nails for Rs 1,000 each from Mangaldas.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Nagpur/Two-more-arrested-in-tiger-poaching-case/articleshow/5905439.cms

Tigers shake off tracking devices

KOLKATA: Sunderbans tigers don't seem game for radio collars or computer chips. So much so, that at least two tigresses have discarded the German-made radio collars that forest department employees tagged on them in February this year while a third big cat's radio collar — which was tagged in March — isn't sending signals to forest officials' computers, making it impossible for them to keep track of her.

The tigresses, captured when they strayed into human habitat, had radio collars tied around their necks before they were released back into the wild. Scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, came down to the Sunderbans in February to tag radio collars on two tigresses. They also trained state forest employees to perform the task. The training came in handy when forest employees had to tag a radio collar on another tigress in March.

Experts thought of the radio collars as the most effective way to keep track of tigers in the wild. If these functioned normally, they would send regular signals which would pop up on computers of forest officials — particularly useful whenever the big cat was about to stray into human habitat again. In such an eventuality, forest officials would pass on a warning message to residents of villages the tiger was straying into.

However, within months of the radio collars being tagged on the three tigresses, forest officials realised that their computer screens showed no alerts about movements of the animals. Instead, signals from two radio collars indicated that the tigresses had discarded them. Forest employees were then sent into the dense jungle and traced the two radio collars, which were lying abandoned. A third radio collar tagged in March has turned out to be defunct, and isn't sending signals, officials say.

Wildlife experts say the terrain of the Sunderbans, where tigers alternate between land and water, renders radio collars ineffective. Moreover, these can easily come off a tiger's neck as the big cats have to negotiate through dense vegetation, said experts.

State principal chief conservator of forests Atanu Raha said: “We have requested scientists from the wildlife institute in Dehradun to come down to Kolkata on Friday. We intend to seek their suggestions on ways to make radio-collaring more effective."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Kolkata-/Tigers-shake-off-tracking-devices/articleshow/5911280.cms