(04-27-2016, 11:38 AM)Apollo Wrote: @Vijay Rajan


Thanks for the info on Bamera and Blue eye.
Is there is any weight and measurement details taken on Bamera and Blue eye when they were captured.

Any info on Tarun aka Bheema from Magdhi zone, didnt see or heard about him for sometime now.

Thanks

(04-27-2016, 08:01 PM)peter Wrote: Interesting information. Many thanks Vijay Rahan.

Some time ago, a questionnary used by researchers in India was posted. I read it. There's no question that sedated tigers are measured and weighed. Same for tigers killed in conflicts. In spite of that, we only very seldom hear anything about measurements and weights. Is there a way to get the information we would want to see?

• Pawan Dixit, Hindustan Times, Lucknow
  | 
• Updated: Apr 27, 2016 15:35 IST
  

(04-28-2016, 07:42 PM)Vijay Rajan Wrote:

(04-27-2016, 11:38 AM)Apollo Wrote: @Vijay Rajan


Thanks for the info on Bamera and Blue eye.
Is there is any weight and measurement details taken on Bamera and Blue eye when they were captured.

Any info on Tarun aka Bheema from Magdhi zone, didnt see or heard about him for sometime now.

Thanks

Apollo,

I'll try my best to obtain details of Bamera & Blue Eye's weights but wouldn't be optimistic since the BTR FD never disclose such info (for reasons best known to them).

Kindly note, Bheem is predominantly from Khitauli zone & not Magdhi. He remains the undisputed King of Khitauli zone & is being sighted almost every alternate day, a majority of those sightings occurring in Nigaah Nala, Kokdar, Darraha & Van Talai.

(04-29-2016, 11:40 PM)Pckts Wrote:

*This image is copyright of its original author

What does this mean?
Do you think this is truly because of an increase in poaching, poisoning  and irresponsibility or do you think its because the means of monitoring these cats is improving and we now finally are able to see just how many tigers we are killing with more accuracy than ever before?
Or a little bit of both, let me know what you guys think.

Quote:Last year, India’s foremost tiger biologist and Asia director of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Ullas Karanth, contested the mathematical models used to estimate his country’s tiger population, casting doubt on the 30-percent rise in numbers. India is the largest remaining stronghold of the wild tiger and is home to 520 of the 690 “new” tigers counted in last week’s report.

With considerable human effort, money, and political will, tigers are slowly recovering in large, well-protected landscapes with plenty of prey, particularly in reserves in central India, in the Himalayan foothills, and amid the mountains of the Western Ghats.



On Wednesday, newspapers across the world reported widely that the population of wild tigers had grown from 3,200 in 2010 to 3,800 in 2014 which has been steadily dwindling for 100 years.
Quoting a joint report from The World Wildlife Fund and The Global Tiger Forum the news came ahead of the three day International Union for Conservation of Nature Conference of 13 countries in New Delhi.
The WWF-GTF report should have brought much cheer to conservationists, however, world renowned conservation zoologist and leading tiger expert based in Bengaluru, Dr K Ullas Karanth, Director for Science-Asia for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), was quick to release a critical response to the WWF-GTF report.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Dr Ullas Karanth. Photo credit: Sandesh Kadur
Stating that these were his personal views and may not reflect that of the WCS, Dr Karanth said, “The various country-wide, regional, and landscape level tiger numbers reported in the WWF-GTF report are not based on any estimates from intensive rigorous camera trap/DNA studies of source populations. They are predominantly based on various kinds of counts of tiger spoor or in some cases simple guesswork.”
He also stated, that “Some tiger numbers cited in the GTF-WWF report have been generated by demonstrably flawed statistical extrapolations. Consequently these numbers are not reliable or useful metrics for assessing the fate of wild tigers, unlike the rigorous methods.”
We reached out to Dr Karanth to find out more.
Firstpost: So does this report call for celebration or is it a call too soon?
Dr Karanth: Neither, these numbers are all derived using poor methods or in some cases, guesswork.
Firstpost: India has the best numbers — 2,226 tigers. Cambodia on the other hand has zero tigers. What did we do better than the other countries?
Dr Karanth: India certainly has more tigers than any other country, for the past 50 years we have invested more money, man power, and political backing for tiger conservation and the results are showing.
Firstpost: Has the tiger population really grown or is it that our survey methods are better? For instance you have pioneered the radio telemetry and also the Camera trapping techniques. How have these newer methods vis-à-vis pug mark method changed in the tiger population census?
Dr Karanth: Tiger population in India has grown from the lows of 1960s, but the growth is uneven across the country.
His response to the report clarified this further: Tiger ‘source populations’ that produce ‘surpluses’ occupy just 90,000 sq km of the remaining 1.2 million square kilometers of tiger habitat in the world. About 90 per cent of all surviving tigers are confined to small 7 per cent area, broken up into 40-50 source populations. Tigers will certainly go extinct if we fail to protect these. Because of this these source populations should be monitored using the most rigorous methods that employ camera trap/DNA surveys at advanced statistical models.
The Pugmark method was abandoned in 2005 and camera traps are being used increasingly now, although not always using the best statistical design or analyses. These aspects need more attention.
Firstpost: You and the Centre for Wildlife Society (CWS) have done a lot of work in the Nagerhole National Park and in saving the Bengal tiger. How did this work help in conservation and preservation of tigers?
Dr Karanth: The WCS supported work in Nagarahole for over 30 years and has many components: development of new methods to monitor tigers and prey; gathering basic knowledge about their biology using these methods, supporting fair voluntary relocation of people who want to move out of the reserve and citizen science to develop local conservation leaders. All these have delivered gains, I think.
Firstpost: What can we look forward to gaining at the upcoming 3 day International Union for Conservation of Nature Conference of 13 countries at Delhi?
Dr Karanth: Such tiger summits have been held regularly for the past 10 years at great cost to the tax-payer… I do not think they have been very useful in practical terms.
Firstpost: Whither 2022 and what are the goals you hope to achieve by then?
Dr Karanth: I do not believe the goal of doubling tiger numbers by 2022 is realistic. I hope the country will infuse more rigorous science into its already substantial investments in tiger conservation.
‘Focus of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been on doing such advanced monitoring of number of key source populations across tiger range. Rigorous, intensive, long term camera trap studies conducted by WCS in India, Thailand and Russia show that tiger population recovery from depressed levels is a slow process, even in these relatively better protected sites. None of the populations have been observed to ‘double’ in 10 years, even under best of protection.
If that is the case, simple back of the envelope calculations show that to double global tiger numbers from 3200 tigers in 2012 within ten years, would necessarily require increases of 27 per cent per year in ‘sink landscapes’.
This does not appear to be a realistic goal.
Firstpost: Predators are increasingly appearing in human habitats like the recent incidents of a leopard getting into school in Bangalore and a tiger that was killed in Nagaland. With increasing encroachment of forest land, how can we prevent these kinds of human-animal conflict for habitat and right to life?
Dr Karanth: Tigers are at high densities and producing surpluses in some well protected reserves, so such conflicts are inevitable on the edges and need to be managed scientifically so that local people living around the reserves do not turn hostile to them.

Quote:Better camera trapping, and DNA analysis, in places like Bhutan did indeed find some new tigers, and expanded surveys in India now include tigers living outside reserves.
But counting cats in previously undocumented areas doesn’t mean they’re rebounding—it just means more complete data, notes John Goodrich, one of the statement’s authors who’s also the director of the tiger program atPanthera, an NGO dedicated to big cat conservation. Given the elusiveness of tigers and the rough, remote lands they inhabit, we’ll never know exactly how many there are, he says.
Each country uses different methods, and some are questionable. Russia’s researchers have counted Siberian tigers’ pugmarks—the same technique that led to India’s pre-2008 overestimates. Nepal’s data are three years old; Sumatra’s date from 2011. 



Tigers are not a single species, so the actual number of tigers must be divided among the five subspecies remaining in the wild. Assessed that way, their situation is even more precarious. Some 2,633 Bengal tigers live in Nepal, Bhutan, and India. The paltry remainder—1,257 tigers—is split among the other four subspecies: Siberian, Indochinese, Malay, and Sumatran. These tigers are almost extinct.

The greatest threat? “It’s poaching,” says Goodrich, adding that with the cats hunted out of 40 percent of their range in the past five years, nearly 400,00 square miles (1,000,000 square kilometers) of perfectly good habitat lies vacant—an area the size of Egypt.

Quote:What worries me is that [this report] gives a sense of complacency.” Tigers have gone virtually extinct in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia since 2010, and some of India’s most important tiger landscapes are doomed by dams, mining, and other infrastructure, she says. “So what are we celebrating?”

At the turn of the 20th century some 100,000 tigers roamed throughout Asia. Today tigers are scattered across 7 percent of their former range, often in small “island” populations whose isolation puts them at risk of becoming inbred and imperils their long-term survival.

Quote:Demand for tiger parts is skyrocketing. “India's tiger poaching and seizure figures for the first quarter of 2016 are the highest in the past 15 years,” 

Quote:Increasing tiger density (number of tigers in 100sq km) apart, 40 percent of 2,206 tigers in India are outside the most protected core area of tiger reserves, the HT reported.

The national park of Pench spreading across Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, for instance, has left its buffer zone (zone marked as tiger habitation) unpatrolled by forest guards as it has 600 villages and many roads traversing it; making it easy for poachers to infiltrate, hunt and smuggle.

The latest killings meant that "access to tigers is as easy as before," especially with many issues left unsorted.

(05-07-2016, 06:15 PM)Pckts Wrote: A-mark tigress has died.
She was reported to be found with deep injuries to her spine and left side.
She was the mother to the infamous Jai.

Sad news indeed

(05-07-2016, 06:15 PM)Pckts Wrote: PcktsA-mark tigress has died.
She was reported to be found with deep injuries to her spine and left side.
She was the mother to the infamous Jai.

Sad news indeed