Tigers Have Very Little to Eat in Amrabad Reserve

Hyderabad: The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has warned of a rapid rise in human-wildlife conflict in the three tiger reserves in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and called for prey recovery plans and supplementation to support increasing tiger population.

The NTCA, in its report, ‘Status of ungulates in tiger habitats of India’, called the Amrabad tiger reserve and Nagarjunasagar Srisailam tiger reserve (NSTR), and Gundla Brahmeswaram (GBM) sanctuary forest belt in Nallamala hills as an “isolated block with a rapidly increasing tiger population but low prey density. Without prey recovery and supplementation, human-wildlife conflict in this region is also expected to rise rapidly.” Prior to formation of Telangana, Amrabad, NSTR, and GBM were part of a single protected area, the Rajiv Gandhi tiger reserve.

The Amrabad tiger reserve, according to NTCA, “is a crucial part of the NSTR landscape, which forms one of the largest contiguous tiger habitats in India.” This landscape is spread over nearly 3,300 sq km through which River Krishna flows and is also where the Srisailam temple town is located.

The ungulates which are the prey species for carnivores in the tiger reserves typically comprise deer and antelope species chital, sambar, nilgai, chousingha and chinkara, and wild pig.

Compared to the more ‘established’ tiger reserves in the country, Amrabad, NSTR-GBM have been found to have lesser numbers of the prey species per sq km of the forest area. Kawal tiger reserve in Telangana incidentally has around 12 of these prey animals per sq km compared to around 8 per sq km in Amrabad, according to the report.

“One reason why this is so could be because there is no predation in Kawal as the reserve has no resident tigers. Typically a tiger needs 4 or 5 chital a month to sustain itself, which means it might kill around 60 of these or other prey animals a year. Also, a large chunk of Amrabad, in the Devarakonda division of the reserve practically is bereft of prey animals, which is likely due to poaching, and though this zone falls in the core area of the reserve, barely sees any tigers,” a forest department official explained.

Though the NTCA report provides an estimate of the prey animals in each reserve, there are also some concerns that the line transect method – where staff walk a given distance in a straight line inside the forest and note animals seen over a 1.5 or a 2 km distance – may not provide an accurate picture.

“The detection probability depends on the season, disturbances if any, and how serious those doing the work are. Instead, extensive camera trapping may be the way to get estimates closer to reality,” a wildlife official from the department said.

The best performing tiger reserves have the highest chital populations and efforts are on to achieve this in Amrabad, the official said. As part of prey augmentation in the reserve, the forest department is in the process of setting up a 100-acre enclosure in the Maddimadugu range that abuts Krishna river, and this enclosure will have deer brought from other areas where they may be in conflict with humans, or from overpopulated small national parks in Hyderabad.

Deer brought here will be allowed to settle down for a few months, and also breed and after ensuring their health is good and they are not carrying any disease, they will be released into the reserve to make more prey available to the rising number of tigers, the official explained.