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[Rishi]

It's official: Odisha to get 6 tigers from MP
Updated: Feb 10, 2018, 05:35 AM IST

Madhya Pradesh responds to Odisha's SOS call asking for surplus tigers.

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On Friday, the Madhya Pradesh government granted an in-principle approval to translocate three pairs of tigers from the state to the Satkosia tiger reserve.

In August last year, Odisha government had planned to launch an ambitious project by releasing adult Royal Bengal Tigers in low tiger density forests to enhance the number of big cats. “We are planning to release a pair of tigers at the Satkosia tiger reserve in Angul district on a pilot basis. If the scheme is successful, the government may undertake similar efforts in other forests,” Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) Sandeep Tripathy had said.

According to the 2016 tiger census, Odisha has only 40 Royal Bengal Tigers — 13 males, 24 females and three cubs. Satkosia has been chosen on a pilot basis as food would not be a major problem for the big there due to the presence of a large number of animals of different species there.

The 965 sq-km Satkosia Tiger Reserve in Odisha presently has only two old tigers — a male and a female, both over the age of 13, at Satkosia forest division at present. Once they were dead there would no tiger left in the tiger reserve. That’s why Wildlife Institute of India (WII) had chalked out a long term plan for the Reserve.

Earlier, Odisha government had also written to other states with overpopulated tiger reserves for a few of the big cats.
There is a standard operating procedure to guide the process of relocation by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). “Basically, it tells us from which landscape you can pick up tigers. In Satkosia, the habitat is there, the prey is there but there are insufficient tigers. This SOP tells us that we can pick up tigers from Kanha National Park, for instance, which have a similar genetic type,” said Vaibhav C Mathur from the NTCA.


Mahanadi river in Satkosia Gorge that gives the reserve its name.

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“The Chief Wildlife Warden of Madhya Pradesh has agreed to relocate a pair from MP to Satkosia. There were plans to relocate tigers from Tadoba National Park in Maharashtra earlier, but the Tigers in Bandhavgarh were closest in terms of genetic type,” Wildlife Institute of India scientist Y V Jhala was quoted.
During a genetic analysis of existing tigers WII found that the genetic make-up of the tigers in Satkosia was similar to that of Madhya Pradesh tigers as compared to genetic make-up of tigers of even other parts of Odisha, hence the plan to translocate MP’s tigers to Odisha.

Though the decision is yet to be taken as to from which part of the state the tigers will be relocated to Odisha, as per the forest department officials most probably the tigers would be shifted from Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Pench.
“The first pair of tigers - a male and a female - is expected to be relocated in March or April. Odisha’s chief wildlife warden is expected to visit Madhya Pradesh in the first week of March.We will meet with NTCA and Odisha officials in the first week of March to finalise if the tigers will be sourced from Kanha or Bandhavgarh. We will also visit Satkosia to assess the situation," said Jitendra Agrawal, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Wildlife, MP government.

“Only such tigers will be sent which are not overage and are mainly two to two-and-a-half-year old. We will select such tigers for translocation which are looking for their own territories having been separated from or discarded by their mothers and are in a conflict area”, said a department official.
Once the first pair is settled well over there then there would be the process to shift the next pair, said the PCCF.

This will be first inter-state translocation of tigers in the country once it takes place, said forest department officials. Reply