In Forests of Dooars, North Bengal

[Jimmy]

@Rishi didnot realise that was a painting . Greatone !!! For your quriosity here is the geographic map of Nepal, notice the emerald green 'tropical forest' running from east to west, on the central part of this belt is Chitwan. You can notice that from Chitwan up to East, the forest runs above the agricultural land -in yellow, which means the forest cover has been lost in the plains and converted as settlements or agriculture, the forest still remain in moderate mountainous area but natural grasslands are lost.

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You can see this clearly as the Parsa reserve-adjacent to Chitwan rises up and leaves the border of India. Not much distance is there between Parsa and Kshi Tappu to the east, but the forest corridor is for the most part mountainous and due to not being on any projects like 'Terai arc landscspe' is slightly fragmented in places and protection for animals will not be great in those corridors.

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Tigers were present in Koshi tappu but it was not a royal reserve so protection was limited, it was gazetted as a reserve mainly as a catchment area for Koshi river, it was unhabitable due to massive flooding, and thus left to hardy wild buffaloes, there was very limited prey animals, buffaloes were few around 50 individuals. For the long term this was not viable for tigers both in terms of preybase and small area 175sq km -good part of that is a like a wasteland made up of sand bars stretching on both sides and large swelling  river and it's branches. Besides wild buffaloes had no value for poachers, and the reserve did not require mobilizing guards and armies. and the buffaloes simply thrived on neglect. Now there is a talk with better protection, and increase of blue bulls and smaller preys to enlarge the area to the north following along the banks of the river. This undoubtedly opens up riverine grassland habitat and there could possibly be transfer of rhinos there as promised when taking buffaloes from there to Chitwan, and also tigers and swamp deer translocation has been proposed in the area after extension. Regarding animals moving free naturally from east to west, I think the main hurdle is the lack of protection and poaching when they leave the reserve the second I think is fragmentation in places and the third is that, the grassland is limited and it's slight hilly region- the remaining corridor forests. So for animals like rhinos and buffaloes it will be a barrier , for elephants, tigers etc they can traverse those areas Iam sure if it is given enough protection. I had seen with wwf that they had proposed 'Greater Terai arc' spanning all the way to Koshi reserve. Hope to see this come to fruition.

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