Tigers of Ranthambore & Western India Landscape

[BorneanTiger]

(09-04-2019, 03:29 PM)Rishi Wrote:

(09-03-2019, 04:46 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Would tigers in Pakistan (which used to be the northwestern part of India), including what is now Bahawalpur, have been closely related to tigers in what is now northwestern India, including Ranthambhore National Park in the State of Rajasthan?

...Map of tigers' distribution by Nowell and Jackson (1996):

*This image is copyright of its original author

Not impossible, or atleast some genetic similarity is certainly likely with Terai as well as the old Sariska population, not the present ones brought in from Ranth. Ranthambore tigers are remnants of Gwalior tigers, the forest complex of northern Madhya Pradesh.

The last sentence of your pic says "Last known tiger in Pakistan shot in 1906 near Panjnad, Bahawalpur state". 
The Punjnad area (red circle) is where all main tributaries of Indus converge & meet. There the princely state of Bahawalpur would have formed the westernmost point of tigers' estimated historical range (orange line)... 

*This image is copyright of its original author

...Frankly i didn't even know there were tigers there.

Presently there is one last 1100km² patch of natural vegetation called Lal Suhanra National Park Biosphere Reserve (map location) still intact at that area of Pakistan. 
The place had rhino once, presently holds a captive pair gifted by Nepal in semi-wild enclosure. They didn't breed though. From photos it looks like a zoo-cum-breeding centre for blackbucks etc. @fursan syed may be able to shed more light. This is how it looks though; desert, scrub, grassland & riverine forests.

... Westernmost part of the Bengal tiger's range, apparently. Go further west into Afghanistan and Iran nearby, and you come into the former range of the Caspian tiger, and that's what strikes me, like I mentioned before, that the ranges of the Bengal and Caspian tigers were that close, yet the Caspian tiger isn't closely related to the Bengal tiger, but is genetically the same subspecies as the Amur tiger, and you might remember what I said about the Mughal Empire having occupied parts of the ranges of both the Bengal and Caspian tigers, including what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

An illustration of a tigerbeing hunted from the Hamir Hath: Ala-uddin and Mahima hunting, Punjab Hills, India, circa 1790: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecat...ot.13.html

*This image is copyright of its original author

Map of the Mughal Empire by Britannica: 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply